Samajwadi Party is feeling the heat of the hyperactive stance of the Congress over the Lakhimpur Kheri incident where eight persons, including four farmers, were killed on October 3.
Massive mobilisation by the Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and chief ministers of Punjab and Chhattisgarh has made SP restless, prompting its state president Naresh Uttam to say that “Congress and Bharatiya Janata party are two sides of the same coin”.
Naresh Uttam, who is on a whirlwind tour of the state, said in Jalaun on Sunday that “the Congress and BJP are two sides of the same coin and both have an understanding”.
He said the people of the state understood that the alternative of Yogi Adityanath was only Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and in such a situation, the BJP had a well thought out strategy to create confusion among the voters of the opposition.
The Lakhimpur incident has also proved to be a setback to the Samajwadi Party campaign to win over the Brahmin voters as the main accused, Ashish Mishra, son of the Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra, is now a prominent Brahmin figure. The Brahmin leaders of the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj party and also the Congress are attacking the BJP and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath but avoiding targeting accused Ashish Mishra over the Lakhimpur incident.
“Congress can afford to take the risk of antagonising Brahmins by leading the agitation over the Lakhimpur incident from the front as it stands to lose nothing in UP, while it has managed to send a very positive signal to its vote bank in poll-bound Punjab,” said a political analyst.
Ever since the killing of Vikas Dube, the mafia of Kanpur, in July 2020, the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party spotted the cracks in the BJP’s Brahmin edifice and tried to slip through the fissures to broad base their own support. The assiduous wooing of the Brahmins by the SP and the BSP through `Prabuddha Sammelans and Brahmin Sammelan’ created the perception that the Brahmin community has now become a tilting factor in the elections.
Many in the opposition camp feel the increasing activism of the Congress is primarily because Priyanka Vadra wants to put the Congress in a position in UP where the party can bargain on seat-sharing with other parties.
However, UP Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu rejected the idea.
“The Congress, being the main opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, is trying to become the voice of the people. The party workers are fighting on the streets and even going to jail for the issues of the people. Since Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s entry into active politics, the Congress is on the front foot in the state, while SP and BSP are silent due to the fear of the CBI and ED,” he said
Significantly, in the 2017 UP assembly elections, the Congress had forged an alliance with Samajwadi Party but the alliance failed to click as the Congress bagged only seven seats while the tally of the SP was reduced to 47 seats. At the same time, even after Priyanka Vadra’s entry into politics in the Lok Sabha elections last year, the Congress was reduced to one seat in UP. The Congress also lost the Amethi Lok Sabha seat of Rahul Gandhi. In such a situation, the importance being given to Congress by the BJP government may also be a reason for weakening the SP and BSP in the state.