Almost reduced to a fringe player in Uttar Pradesh, Congress may be forced to play second fiddle to the Samajwadi Party (SP) in India's biggest state, which sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha, in the next general elections.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav, who had earlier categorically ruled out any kind of understanding with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh in the next Lok Sabha polls scheduled to be held in May 2024, had taken part in the Bengaluru meeting of the opposition parties, and his party is now part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A).
However, he still will be reluctant to leave too many seats for the grand old party.
A senior SP leader here said that his party will also have to accommodate the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which had considerable influence over the electorally significant 'Jat' community in the western UP region. ''Besides Apna Dal (K) will also have to be given a couple of seats,'' the leader told DH here.
The leader said that Congress lacked the organisational strength and support in the state, and it would be a big achievement for the grand old party if it could win even two-three seats.
SP sources said that Akhilesh could offer seven to eight seats to the Congress though the latter had set its eyes on at least 20 seats.
For the Congress, an alliance with the BSP could prove to be more useful than the SP. The party leaders here fear that it will lose its traditional upper caste vote bank, whatever is left of it, if it allies with the SP.
Congress and SP had contested the 2017 state assembly polls in alliance but the SP could win only 47 seats while Congress managed to win seven, 15 less than it had won in the 2012 assembly polls when it had contested on its own.
Sources in the SP said that the party was eager to instead rope in Bhim Army president and firebrand dalit leader Chandrashekhar alias Ravan in its alliance in a bid to expand the alliance's reach into the electorally influential Dalit community, especially in the western UP region.
The SP-RLD nominee had managed to wrest Khatauli seat in Muzaffarnagar district from the BJP by a margin of over 22 thousand votes in the assembly bypolls, indicating that the former received support not only from their core vote bank of 'jats, yadavs' and Muslims, but also from Dalits and other communities.