Why the 2014 polls could spell the end of Congress in UP

While all political parties in Uttar Pradesh are already getting prepared for the next general elections, the Congress is in the process of redesigning its structure. While others have announced their candidates, Congress is still unsure about its party president’s candidature for the Lok Sabha. In Uttar Pradesh, which has the largest number of parliament seats (80), the political war has already started. The Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) are frequently conducting orientation meetings for their workers and candidates. However, the Congress is still in a state of slumber and is visibly invisible. The president of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) Nirmal Khatri last month has told the party general secretary Rahul Gandhi that “it is impossible for him to devote more than seven days to the state as he has to look after his own constituency as well”. Incidentally, Khatri has not been able to form even the 51 member executive committee of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) so far. [caption id=“attachment_1092171” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The end of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh? AFP[/caption] In-charge of the party’s performance in the state, Madhusudan Mistry, has not even visited the state in over a month. Mistry was brought to the state from Gujarat to counter the BJP’s state in charge Amit Shah, who is also from Gujarat. According to UPCC office, Mistry came to the state for the first time on 28 June and held a meeting of the coordinators and those in charge of the eight zones in the state. His frequent visits in July remained restricted to the inauguration of the party’s zonal offices. “The problem is that the party is right now undergoing severe crisis of putting in place the right policies. Since the state assembly election results have been announced the party leadership is continuously experimenting with the organisational structure in the state. How can the party worker start even thinking about election preparation since the process of restructuring the organisation is still on?” a senior Congress leader said. A look at the series of events following the state elections explains the frustration of the party workers. After the assembly elections when the Rita Bahuguna Joshi resigned as the state president of the unit, for six months the party remained without any state head before Nirmal Khatri was brought in, in October. As an experiment the party divided the state in eight zones having 10 parliament seats. These zones were handed over to Rashid Masood, Chowdhury Brijendra Singh, Jitin Prasad, RPN Singh, PL Punia, Raja Ram Pal, Vivek Singh and Anugrah Narain Singh - all influential and powerful leaders, who had powers at par with the state president. These zonal heads were supposed to make their zonal offices and work on their ten constituencies. However, no zonal office was set up except that under Rashid Masood. On seeing the failure of the experiment, another experiment was taken up. The leadership removed these zonal heads and this time deployed lower line of leaders as zonal in-charge along with coordinator in each zone. Last month these officials have been able to set up their offices, which were inaugurated by Mistry. Now the party is employing another experiment and posting presidents in each district along with a working president. “This parallel system has created more tussle and confusion rather than helping in any way. Now instead of challenging the rivals the party office bearers are fighting among themselves. Also, if everyone will become office bearers, who will come on the road to fight?” said a Congress worker. According to him this could have repercussions on the next general election results. His fear has a basis. The party had announced its 26 candidates for general elections immediately after the 2007 assembly election results were announced. The result was that 22 of these candidates won in the 2009 polls. This year, there is a wave of frustration among the party workers. In the 2012 assembly election, Congress had lost eight out of ten assembly constituencies from the Gandhi pocket boroughs of Rae Bareli and Amethi. Apart from these two seats the party’s workers aren’t hopeful of getting any other seats in the state. Some believe legislation like the Land Acquisition and Food Security Bill could be a gamechanger. “The situation will change, Congress had won the 2009 parliament on schemes like MNREGA, loan waiver and other such people oriented schemes and this time Land Aquisition and Food Security Bill will bring back the party to power”, claims Surendra Rajput, a political analyst. However, in reality launching a scheme and expecting people to vote is over ambitious. There are leaders in the party who understand this dilemma and they are struggling to evolve ways to tell the masses about the people oriented schemes launched by the UPA. “The problem is that the Government of India launches the scheme for people but its benefits do not reach the public. The state governments either misuse the money or hijack the scheme,” Harish Bajpai, a senior Congress leader, said. “In UP, Samajwadi Party named the ambulances, bought under the centrally funded Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Rejuvenation Mission (JNNURM), as Samajwadi Ambulance Service. We have to evolve ways to counter this problem,” he said. In this regard, union minister RPN Singh was in the state, recently. Singh gave the party workers some tips on how to inform the masses about the central government schemes so that the message was conveyed that they were launched by the UPA and not by the Samajwadi Party. However, talking about schemes cannot bring Congress closer to the people. “At present, the Congress is behaving like a feudal lord, for whom the people are its subjects and the party workers are bonded labour. Therefore, its leadership does not try to establish a direct dialogue with them. All communication is done through intermediaries,” Ramesh Dixit, a professor of political science in Lucknow University, said Citing the examples of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Dixit said, “The Congress used to be a people’s party but now it is being run by people coming from rich and elite class which travels by air and speaks in English. They do not understand the language and culture of people. For them politics is management. Launch the scheme and people will come back.” However, a few old faithful Congressmen like Harish Bajpai are still hopeful. “This month the party restructuring will be complete. Then the worker will be taught the use of social media. The result of these efforts will be visible in a couple of months,” he said.