WHY PRIYANKA MAY SPOIL SP-BSP PARTY IN UP?

Struggling with its sagging fortunes, India’s grand old party – the Congress – seems to have found its ‘Brahmashashtra’ in Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who it believes can revive the political destiny of the party. Realising that the road to its revival hinges in the bellwether state Uttar Pradesh, which sends the maximum 80 lawmakers to parliament, the Congress president Rahul Gandhi has appointed his sister as the party general secretary and in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh in the hope that her charismatic personality may arrest the party’s steep fall in the crucial state.

In the last few decades, the Congress, which used to draw its maximum strength from Uttar Pradesh, has ceded space to the regional parties – the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party – besides the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which all have grown at its expense. Therefore, it becomes crucial for the party to devote its maximum energy in the state, and the appointment of Priyanka and Jyotiraditya Scindia, who has been tasked with the western Uttar Pradesh, is being seen in that direction. Scindia had recently played a significant role in the party’s success in Madhya Pradesh elections.

pix courtesy: latestLY.com

The responsibility is huge for both Scindia and Priyanka, whose role so far was limited to campaigning to the family pocket boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli, the parliamentary constituencies of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, respectively. Not only that the duo will have to cope with the rising graph of the BJP, which swept the last parliamentary elections by bagging 73 seats (including two seats by its ally, the Apna Dal), the party will be hard pressed to find its footing in the face of the “gathbandhan” of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.  The Congress had recorded its worst performance in the 2014 parliamentary elections when it could only protect its traditional seats of Amethi and Rae Bareli.

While the selection and responsibility of Priyanka Gandhi can be understandable from the party’s point of view, the decision may hurt the SP-BSP alliance more than the BJP. The BJP garnered 42.30 % of the total votes polled registering an impressive growth of 24.80% and its ally – the Apna Dal – one percent. On the contrary, the SP saw its fortunes dip by just 1.06 percent (it got 22.20% votes), but it won only 5 seats losing 18 in the process. But Mayawati’s BSP and the Congress were hit the hardest losing 7.82% and 10.35% respectively of the total votes polled. BSP, which had won 20 seats in the 1999 parliamentary elections, was completely wiped out failing to secure even one seat, the Congress managed to secure only two seats while forfeiting 19 seats.

If one has to go by arithmetic, the SP (with 22.20% votes) and BSP (with 19.60% votes) together hope to corner 41.80 percent votes as against the BJP and Apna Dal’s vote share of 43.30 percent with a deficit of just 1.50% if the voting pattern remains the same. If both the SP and BSP manage to protect their voter base and don’t lose ground further, they are hoping to upset the apple cart of the BJP. Keeping the Congress, which garnered 7.50 percent votes in the last elections, out of the alliance and the entry of Priyanka Gandhi in the state, may put paid to the two regional parties’ analysis.

If Priyanka really manages to wean away the disgruntled die-hard voters to her party’s fold, it will be the SP and the BSP, which will suffer the most. For, it is highly unlikely that she will be able to make inroads into the BJP, which has a committed cadre who have remained steadfast with the party over the years.

It remains to be seen whether Priyanka will be able to bring any windfalls to the party in terms of seats, but her arrival is bound to galvanise the party, which is on a free fall. There is every possibility that the party may benefit in terms of vote share. And if that happens, she will be cutting into the traditional vote base of the SP and BSP. Instead of a direct contest between BJP on one hand and SP-BSP alliance on the other, there will now be a three-cornered contest. In this scenario, there is bound to be division of votes, which will ultimately help the BJP. Mayawati and Akhilesh seem to have misread the situation completely by maintaining a distance from the Congress as they were unsure that the latter could pitchfork Priyanka in the politically crucial state with wider responsibilities. This might prove to be a costly miscalculation on their part.