Lucknow, May 19: The bonhomie between the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) seems to be over. The BSP, which had supported the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) against the BJP-sponsored cut motion in Parliament, is back as the Congress’s number one rival in Uttar Pradesh.
On Tuesday, party general secretary Rahul Gandhi clarified that the Congress had neither reached an agreement with Uttar Pradesh chief minister and BSP president Mayawati nor was there any possibility of it happening.
This is a shift from what Digvijay Singh, the party’s general secretary incharge of UP affairs, had said last month after the UPA successfully saw through the cut motion. Digvijay had also appreciated Mayawati’s decision to cleanse her party of criminal elements.
“We thank the UP CM for helping the UPA to sail through the cut motion. We also appreciate her effort to keep the communal elements at bay and stand with the secular forces. We will support her if she takes up public issues. We also welcome her for taking up the issue of criminalisation of politics,” Digvijay had said on April 29 in Lucknow.
His statement had sent confusing message to the Congress workers who were gearing up for the 2012 assembly elections with the hope that the party would return to power.
However, Rahul’s statement at a rally in Ahraura in Mirzapur district of eastern Uttar Pradesh put the matters beyond doubt. “Some people have started saying the Congress has entered into an alliance with the BSP.
But I want to make it clear today that there is no understanding of the Congress with the BSP. And it will never happen in future. It is for sure that the BSP would be dislodged by the Congress in UP,” Rahul said.
The Gandhi scion also said the party’s focus was the BSP’s defeat and this, he claimed, would be done with the help of the youth brigade. “ It should necessarily be done because there is hardly any governance in the state. Mayawati says her government is for poor Dalits, but the Dalits say there is no such government in the state,” Rahul said.
“ But winning elections and coming to power is not the only target of the Congress. We need to take UP on the path of development and generate employment to retain its manpower.” Rahul was later presented with a bow and arrow by two tribals.
Initially, they were detained by the police for reaching the rally venue with a bow and arrow. But UP Congress Committee president Rita Joshi intervened and they got a chance to meet Rahul.
—Agencies