Congress hopes to ride on farmers' agitation in Uttar Pradesh to unseat Mayawati

NEW DELHI: With Mamata Banerjee said to be on the cusp of a revolution triggered by land acquisition-fuelled agitation, it was no coincidence that Congress embraced the Nandigram formula on Wednesday to regain relevance in Uttar Pradesh.

The party went the whole hog -- led by heir apparent Rahul Gandhi -- in the unrest sweeping western UP, baring its intent to tap the anger to springboard itself to the centrestage for 2012 polls. With less than a year left, the sensitivity of land disputes raised hopes of a shortcut to the otherwise long road ahead. Nandigram-Singur is the mantra.

Rahul and Digvijay Singh played on farmers' resentment to the hilt at Bhatta Parsaul in Noida, painting Mayawati as being in league with industrialists and robbing them of their wealth.

The party thinks such accusations amplify their corruption plank because of the wider appeal of farmers as a pan-state community. Rahul plans to tour across districts on May 17-18 to further work on the strategy.

But more importantly, they help weaken the rival' caste web. The anger among landowners spills across caste lines and forms a better antidote to BSP's "social engineering".

That top guns were pressed into action showed as much a Congress bid to gain leadership of the splintered opposition as to underscore the potential it sees in the issue.

The western region is crucial because BSP has entrenched itself here like few before. Mayawati broke the traditional social clout of landed Jats by networking the numerical superiority of non-Jat backward classes and came out triumphant in 2007.

But the protests are not a good augury for her. As in Tappal in Aligarh, Bhatta Parsaul paints the Mayawati regime to be exploiting farmers for industrialists.

Observers say the perception among farmers of an exploitative government threatens to consolidate groups across caste lines and thereby landing the leadership to Jats in view of their clout. Such a turn would neutralize the 'Jat vs non-Jat' politics Mayawati effectively created to her benefit.

She drew on partnership between dalits, sharing a bond with their local biggie from Badalpur, and Gujjars, with a sprinkling of upper castes driven by hostility for Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The BSP chief moved further on that course when she brought Jat-farmer icon Mahendra Singh Tikait to his knees for caste abuses. It was seen as upturning the age-old social pyramid.

Congress hopes that its befriending of the farming community in western region, with a possible tie-up with Jat strongman Ajit Singh of RLD, can put it in a position of relevance and reverse the Mayawati formula.