Akhilesh drifting away from Congress ahead of 2019?

Lucknow: The Samajwadis are in a fix, unable to fathom the direction their party and its chief Akhilesh Yadav is planning to take for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

In the past one week, Mr Yadav has turned hostile towards the Congress which he had described as a “natural ally” ahead of  the 2017 UP elections.

Mr Yadav has said that the Congress and the BJP are two sides of the same coin, he claimed that the Congress had become arrogant and added that there would be no alliance with the Congress in 2019.

It is obvious that the SP chief is banking upon the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for the Lok Sabha elections and is severing all links with the Congress.

“We fail to understand the strategy of the party. The BSP has a history of ditching political allies and we should be wary of Ms Mayawati. Mr Yadav is depending too much on her even though there have been no formal talks between them. Most of us feel that the SP is playing with fire. What will happen if the BSP rejects a tie-up the last minute?” asked an SP MLA.

Samajwadi leaders are also worried that statements against the Congress by their party president could be construed as an attempt to help the BJP.

“There is no doubt that the Congress is a national party and to counter the BJP, we have to ally with it, whether we like it or not. Any attempt to create divisions in the anti-BJP formation could be misconstrued, especially, by the minorities,” said a Muslim MLA of the party.

The Congress, meanwhile, is in a wait-and-watch mode. “The public is intelligent enough to know who is secular and who is playing the BJP’s game. If any party is turning its back on us, it is apparently helping the BJP by dividing secular votes. The Congress is ready to take everyone on board but we have to wait for the right time and there is no question of arrogance on this issue,” said a senior Congress leader.

An SP leader, who rejected an invitation from Mr Yadav’s estranged uncle Shivpal Singh to join the latter’s  Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (PSP), criticised the party chief for people disconnect.

“The problem with Akhilesh Yadav is that he is not connected to ground reality. He thinks that he is a chief minister-in-waiting. With ex-SP leaders and supporters like Shivpal Yadav and Raja Bhaiyya forming their own parties, the SP could face major erosion in its vote base and an alliance with the BSP will demolish the party organisation on the seats that are given to the BSP.”

The Yadav leaders in SP are also apprehensive that the alliance with the BSP could boomerang since the reservation in promotion issue and the SC/ST Act will be one of the major election issues for the BSP.

“The reservation in promotion and the SC/ST Act issue hit the OBCs hard in the rural areas. If the BSP supports these issues, which it will without doubts, what will be the stand of the SP?” asked a Yadav MLA.

In 2014, the BJP won 72 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP. The SP won five and the BSP did not win any. The BJP-led NDA’s vote share was 42.30 per cent. The combined vote share of the SP (22.20 per cent) and the BSP (19.60 per cent) was almost equal to the NDA.