The Congress has become a fringe player in this crucial Hindi belt state.
The Congress’ decision to contest on 17 Lok Seats out of the 80 in Uttar Pradesh seems more of an effort to mark its presence in the country’s most significant electoral theatre than a step exuding confidence of a party on a revival run. Seventeen is the lowest number of seats that the grand old party is contesting in the state since Independence.
The shrinking voter base of the party and the failure of its cadre to use innovation and put in special effort to win back their confidence have reduced the Congress to just a fringe player in this crucial Hindi belt state. The party appears to have resigned to the fate of having lost political space in the state to regional players like the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Today, the Congress has been reduced to a junior partner of the SP and it is staring at the big question of whether it will be able to raise its Lok Sabha tally in the state from one or end with a zero as it did in 1977 and 1998.
After UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi pulled out of the contest in Gandhi family pocket borough, Rae Bareli, her traditional seat, and Rahul and Priyanka still seemingly undecided on contesting from Amethi, or from Rae Bareli, the posturing by the senior leadership is adding to the lack of confidence in the cadre.
In the current context, the Congress is dependent on the SP for its own political success in UP. The party’s candidates will rely heavily on Muslim and anti-BJP voters for success.
However, the SP finds itself on a weak turf after its allies like Jayant Chaudhry’s RLD, Apna Dal (K), Swami Prasad Maurya and Dara Singh left for greener pastures.
Even for its 17-odd seats, the Congress was almost the last to announce candidates. In contrast, the BJP and the SP declared their nominees much earlier.
The number of seats that the Congress contested in 2004 was 73. Out of these it won 9 with 12-18% vote share. The seven seats fought by Congress allies were also lost. In 2009, the UPA was in power but despite that the party fielded candidates only on 69, out of 80, seats in UP. The party won 21 seats with 18.25% vote share. In 2014, the Congress tied up with RLD and Mahan Dal but it could win only two seats—Rae Bareli and Amethi. In 2019, it fought the Lok Sabha battle alone and out of the 67 candidates fielded by it, only Sonia Gandhi managed to win and the party got a vote share of 6.36%. Even Rahul Gandhi lost the Amethi seat. In the coming elections, the Congress is fighting on 17 seats under an alliance with the SP. Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai, who has once again been named as the party candidate from Varanasi against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is the only big name that emerged early.
On most of the 17 seats on which the Congress will contest the coming election, its candidates lost their security deposit in 2019. These seats include Varanasi, Allahabad, Amroha, Ghaziabad, Fatehpur Sikri, Jhansi, Barabanki, Maharajganj and Deoaria.
At present, the Congress has two MLAs in the UP Assembly and none in the legislative council. There is no leader from the state in the Rajya Sabha. Senior state leader Pramod Tiwari is representing Rajasthan in the Upper House. The party’s downfall in the most politically crucial state over the years has brought it to such a state that today it does not have even one sitting MP to field from the UP.
The Congress is known to have seen ups and downs. After the Emergency, the Congress had fallen flat in the 1977 elections, losing all 85 seats in the undivided state which included Uttarakhand. Yet it managed to bounce back. In 1998, it again lost all seats due to a sympathy wave in favour of the BJP and Atal Behari Vajpayee—after the fall of Vajpayee’s government in 1996—and the desertion by N.D. Tiwari who floated a new party. In 1980, the Congress won 51 seats and in 1984, the Indira Gandhi assassination and the subsequent sympathy wave saw the party win 83 seats.