Is intended SP-Cong alliance of UP like "
Mahagathbandhan" of Bihar?
Negotiations and hard bargaining between Cong & SP are on. Looks like, after Akhilesh officially got bicycle symbol from EC, he is on high. He feels, there is strong wave in his favour and now he hardly needs anybody to recapture power in UP. This confidence has spurred him to severe negotiations with RLD as potential alliance partner and now he is willing to have alliance with Cong also on his terms only. Cong has been pushed so much to the corner in terms of seats offered by SP that now it is finding difficult to salvage its stature as a grand old party and at the same time check its temptation for a piggy back on Akhilesh led SP in order to save it’s complete annihilation in UP .
As of now, it is difficult to say, whether the aforesaid
intended alliance between SP and Cong will ultimately happen or not. However, for argument sake, even
if alliance ultimately happens between
the two, will the same have character and strength of “Mahaathbandahan” of
Bihar?
Those, who have little understanding of politics of Bihar
& UP would feel shy of calling SP-Cong alliance of UP like “Mahagathbandhan of Bihar on the basis of
following:
While in Bihar, out of three main contenders of power, two came
together to take on third i.e. BJP; however in UP, three main contenders i.e.
SP, BSP & BJP continue to fight separately and Congress is not a potent
force today in UP so as to strengthen SP
to significant extent. Yes, their togetherness shall enthuse Muslim voters to
vote for the alliance in huge no. in order to prevent BJP from coming to power.
While in Bihar, muslims voted en bloc for mahagathbandhan despite
Owaisi being in fray;however,same can’t be said for UP. Despite, strong SP-Cong
alliance, it would be naïve to expect
that muslims will be as allergic to BSP as they are mostly found towards BJP.
Given the open call of Dalit-muslim alliance by Mayawati & BSP giving large
no. of seats to muslims, the possibility of split in muslim votes to a
reasonable extent can’t be ruled out.
While in Bihar, due to Nitish and Lalu being the tallest OBC leaders, huge chunk of OBC votes
went to the Mahagathbandhan; however in
UP, huge chunks of OBC votes(minus yadav) seem to be going in favour of BJP.
While in Bihar, due to appeasement of mahadalits by Nitish, huge chunks of mahadalit votes went to
mahagathbandhan; however in UP, due to Mayawati, dalits are expected to vote en
bloc for BSP and not for Cong-SP alliance.
Also, SP-Cong alliance, due to RLD, not being part of it,
shall be considerably weakened in western UP. Due to the Muzaffarnagar riots in
2014 & Ajit Singh not being part of SP-Cong alliance, majority of Jats
shall either vote for RLD or to the BJP.
Again, upper caste votes, seem to be intact with BJP and less
likely to be split among other parties like SP,BSP etc. in significant no. as
in the past and that would be a big handicap of SP-Cong alliance.
In a nutshell, mahagathbandhan of Bihar could create unique
social engineering by way of which majority of castes and religious communities
were found to be solidly standing behind mahagathbandhan; however same can’t be
said about Cong-SP alliance in UP. In fact,SP-Cong alliance is a loose alliance
of the two parties. They are together with limited objective of preventing the
split of muslim votes so as to deny the potential benefit of the same to the
BJP. However, while doing so, they forget that there might be corresponding
mobilization of voters on the other side too.
To sum up, despite Akhilesh emerging as a development
icon in UP and despite SP-Cong
alliance,there is going to be a very
tough and intense triangle electoral battle in UP and it would be really very
tough to predict, which party or
alliance will ultimately emerge
victorious on 11th of March
2017.
