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Congress faces uphill task in making alliance in UP work in its favour
Congress has secured 17 out of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats through its alliance with Samajwadi Party. The remaining 63 seats have been allocated to SP.
The Congress may have entered a seat-sharing agreement with the Samajwadi Party for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. However, it faces a significant challenge of extending the alliance to the booth levels to maximise its benefits.
As alliances with the BSP in 1996 and the Samajwadi Party in 2017 did not yield favourable results for the Congress, leaders of the grand old party are proposing effective measures to ensure that the electoral understanding between the two parties works well in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress has secured 17 out of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats through its alliance with the Samajwadi Party. The remaining 63 seats have been allocated to the Samajwadi Party. “We have been actively engaging in discussions with the Samajwadi Party to ensure coordination at the state level. Recently, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav convened meetings with party units from districts holding the 17 Lok Sabha seats allocated to the Congress. The Congress will soon call all its district units for coordination with the Samajwadi Party,” said Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Ajay Rai.
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“District level coordination committees will be set up for coordination at all the 80 Lok Sabha seats. We will ensure coordination at all the levels,” Rai added.
Rai’s observations assume significance as the alliances have not worked well for the Congress in 1996 and 2017 UP assembly elections when the grand old party entered alliance with the BSP and the SP respectively. It is evident that the Congress needs to implement effective strategies to persuade its cadre about the importance of alliances and ensure their effective implementation.
In the 1996 assembly elections, held before the division of Uttar Pradesh, the Congress entered a seat-sharing agreement with the BSP. Contesting 126 seats in the 425-member state legislative assembly, the Congress managed to win only 33 seats, securing a mere 8.35 per cent of the votes. Its vote share on the contested seats was 29.13 per cent. In the 1993 assembly polls when the SP and the BSP were allied, Congress won 28 out of 421 contested seats, securing 15.08 per cent of the votes and 15.11 per cent on the seats contested.
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The Congress joined hands with the SP in 2017 assembly election and fielded its candidates on 114 seats in the 403-member state assembly. It won only seven seats and secured mere 6.25 per cent votes.
The scrutiny report of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections indicates that the grand old party garnered 6.36 per cent of the votes, which subsequently dropped to 2.33 per cent in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly elections.
While the Congress evidently requires an alliance partner to enhance its performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, party leaders must strategies to maximize the benefits of the alliance. They must now focus on ensuring effective collaboration at the booth levels. With just one seat in the outgoing Lok Sabha and only two MLAs in the 403-member UP legislative assembly, the Congress lacks representation in the UP legislative council.
