Congress leaders believe party will benefit from triangular contest, BJP will suffer most harm.
New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have left the Congress out of their alliance for the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, but leaders of the grand old party see a silver lining in it, saying that it has opened the scope for the replication of its 2009 performance, and also denies the BJP an opportunity to project a Modi-versus-all contest and “polarise votes”.
The BSP and the SP announced Saturday that they will contest on 38 Lok Sabha seats each in UP and have left two seats, Amethi and Rae Bareli, for the Congress. Uttar Pradesh has 80 LS seats.
Ruling out an alliance with the Congress, BSP chief Mayawati equated the Congress with the BJP in terms of its policies and thinking.
She argued that the alliance will not gain anything by including the Congress as the past experiences of both the BSP and the SP had proved that the Congress’ vote is not transferable. The BSP chief even recalled how the Congress had lost due to the Bofors scandal and how the BJP would similarly lose this time due to the alleged Rafale scam.
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We stand to gain, says Cong
“One has to understand the complete arithmetic behind the move. If there would have been an alliance it would have split the votes completely which the Congress can get independently. For instance, there is one section in the state majority of whom are Hindu who will never vote for the SP and they don’t like the BJP too. They see SP as a Muslim party. In case of an alliance they would have had no option but to opt for the BJP. Now that there is no alliance, Congress will gain those voters,” said a senior Congress functionary from Uttar Pradesh.
According to party leaders, the party will enter into alliances with smaller groups in Uttar Pradesh. “We will fight independently on all seats except 10-15 which we will give to smaller regional parties. in 2009 we fought independently and got 22 seats, so it makes no sense to get into an alliance,” said another senior leader.
“State elections are different and Lok Sabha elections have a different dynamic. Also, Mayawati has her own unique style of giving support which always comes with a rider. In Madhya Pradesh she was not with us but after the results she gave support,” said a senior party functionary.
The leader pointed out that the triangular contest will only hurt the BJP as seats will be selected in such a manner that it only “damages the BJP”.
“There is a tacit understanding that seats will be selected by the Congress in a manner that it does harm to the BJP only,” said the party functionary quoted above.
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