Uttar Pradesh: First challenge before Priyanka is to forge an alliance of smaller caste groups

Congress had won 15 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats it won in 2009 from the region which has been entrusted to Priyanka Gandhi in eastern UP and Bundelkhand. It shows that Congress has a base in the region

Uttar Pradesh: First challenge before Priyanka  is to forge an alliance of smaller caste groups
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Biswajeet Banerjee

In 2009 when the Congress’ seat share was 26.3 per cent, BJP’s share was 12.5 per cent. But when in 2014, BJP swept the elections with 71 seats and its seat share rose to 88.8 per cent while the Congress’ share fell to 2.5 per cent.

By and large the electoral performance of the BJP and the Congress do not seem to have affected the SP-BSP combine. Since 1996, the seat shares of the BSP-SP combine has remained largely the same.

In 1996, seat share of the BSP-SP alliance was 25.9 per cent; in 1998 it rose to 28.2 per cent, improving sharply to 47.1 per cent in 1999. In 2004 it was even higher at 67.5 per cent.

Even in 2009, when Congress did relatively better, the SP-BSP together still won 53.8 per cent of the seats.

In 2014, all past poll patterns collapsed like nine pins as the Modi wave decimated all other parties. The seat share of the two formidable regional parties also fell to 6.3 per cent.

Now that the SP and BSP have forged a formal pre-poll alliance for the first time, will the Congress play a spoiler for the regional parties or will it chip away from everyone’s support base? Will 2014 remain an aberration or will BJP’s formidable election machine and its massive war chest salvage the situation for it?

Elections before 2014 had witnessed three-way division of minority votes and that also remains an area of concern. Conventional wisdom suggests that the party’s best bets are to concentrate on urban pockets, forge alliances with smaller castes and wean away a section of the upper castes, non-Jatav Dalits and non-Yadav OBCs.

By appealing to all sections, Congress is going for broke. Will the gamble pay off? The jury is still out.

Dr Nomita P Kumar of Giri Institute of Development Studies in Lucknow says that the first challenge before Priyanka Gandhi will be to successfully forge an alliance of smaller caste groups.

Congress had won 15 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats it won in 2009 (it added one more by winning a by election) from the region which has been entrusted to Priyanka Gandhi in eastern UP and Bundelkhand. “It shows that the Congress has a base in the region and has the potential of capitalising on it,” is also the consensus among Congress workers.

But Dr SP Pandey, Director of Govind Bhai Ballabh Institute of Studies in Rural Development, frowns upon ‘caste politics’. The Indian Constitution, he points out, does not mention caste but class and blames political parties for dividing society on caste lines to win elections. Several academics like him feel that the Congress strategy of rising above caste is the right approach and will pay dividends in the long run.


This is the second part of a three-part article. You can read the first part here:

The game changer: The importance of being Priyanka Gandhi Vadra

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