Uttar Pradesh polls: Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi have to overcome parties’ bitter past

NEW DELHI: The Shilanyas that the Rajiv Gandhi government asked its state government in UP to permit, on November 10, 1989, and demolition of the Babri Masjid, on December 6, 1992, under the BJP state government that the Narasimha Rao regime watched with cultivated drowsiness, inarguably delivered the deadly blows to the once unassailable Congress raj in Uttar Pradesh.

And the leader who tapped the UP Muslims’ post-Ayodhya shock and distrust towards Congress with clinical precision was Mulayam Singh Yadav, who combined it with his Mandal card, crippling the Congress. To this long and eventful backdrop of SP-Congress ties can be added the pulling down of the Mulayam regime, in 1991, by the Congress and SP torpedoing Sonia Gandhi’s 1999 bid to form an alternate government at the Centre.

Such is the burden of history that the two parties carry as their nextgen leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi try to harmonise an alliance in UP for the assembly polls.

Whether SP’s ‘churning feud’ was genuine or staged by Mulayam-Akhilesh duo to flush out the ‘family burden’, may remain an enduring mystery. Yet, the alliance prospect has heightened the two parties’ excitement given their pre-poll compulsions.

But the question remains on whether the parties would find compatibility, with the history of each queering the other’s pitch. ‘Maulana Mulayam’ has always been particular about never giving the UP Congress a leg-up.

“Netaji has been always extra cautious in his dealings with Congress. He always apprehended any tactical opening for Congress would inspire Muslims to desert SP for their original home, Congress,” said an old associate of Yadav. For the AICC, therefore, it is an opportunity to shrewdly pay back Mulayam by making use of his son’s requirement for a poll prop.

“The SP-Congress alliance is happening and I am confident that we will form the government in the state,” AICC general secretary incharge Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Tuesday while adding that the details (seat-sharing formula, Akhilesh-Rahul joint rallies and common minimum programme) will be cleared within days. The alliance, to start with, may help Congress to avert an embarrassing show in the event of going solo.

Aware of the Akhilesh camp’s eagerness and rift in his family, Congress, as ET reported, is bargaining for about 100 seats and the deputy CM’s post. While it can only lend its ‘reassuring name’ to help SP consolidate the key Muslim votes, the UP Congress, with no core social votes to transfer to SP, hopes to benefit from the latter’s transfer of its Yadav-Muslim votes to help it with a presentable tally.

The alliance has the big mission of stopping the BJP in UP, which, if achieved, could take the wind out of the Modi regime’s sails. But the flipside is the anti-incumbency burden the SP regime faces besides the prospects of a division in Muslim votes between the alliance and BSP, something the ‘Mayawatiwary’ BJP will hope for.