E-Paper
Congress in limelight with Uttar Pradesh bus initiative
The Congress seems to have stolen a march on the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on the migrant crisis in Uttar Pradesh with its aggressive posturing against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Congress seems to have stolen a march on the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on the migrant crisis in Uttar Pradesh with its aggressive posturing against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
It is for the first time in the 16 months since she formally joined politics and took up the task of reviving the grand old party’s fortunes in Uttar Pradesh that Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has made some impact in India’s most politically important state with the polite but firm stand she took on the issue.
Gandhi insisted that the Yogi Adityanath government allow her party to ferry 1,000 buses with migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh’s borders back to their homes across the state. In a deft move, she told the chief minister that her party would not mind if the BJP wanted to use its flags on the buses, arguing that it was not a political but humanitarian issue.
The state government denied permission to the buses to transport the migrants on technical grounds, arming the Congress with ammunition to attack the BJP on grounds that it was anti-poor.The Congress claimed that the BJP had been rattled by Priyanka Gandhi’s stand and hence obstructed the attempt to help migrant workers.
“The long march home for our migrant labourers has come at huge human costs...The BJP has shown its real anti-poor face. The BJP government’s continued apathy towards the migrant workers was visible in their initial rejection and then petty games to delay the buses provided by Priyanka ji,” said UP Congress leader Gaurav Kapoor.
The BJP said the Congress was trying to mask its own failures in party-ruled states by taking an aggressive stance on it in UP.
“These workers are not outsiders for us. They are our own people and our resource. Congress governments in Rajasthan, Punjab or Maharashtra have failed to convince them to stay back while no workers are leaving UP. What the Congress is doing now is just hiding its own failings,” UP BJP spokesperson Chandra Mohan said.
While the BJP and the Congress slugged it out in the open, the two regional parties – SP and BSP – surprisingly watched the developments from a distance.
The Congress has clearly overshadowed both the parties at least on this issue though there have been “for the record” statements by BSP chief Mayawati and SP president Akhilesh Yadav.
Political observers argue that both the SP and BSP are trapped in conventional politics and not able to understand a new shift that been sharpened by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Both these parties understand the language of caste but now a new language has reappeared in the political scene due to this pandemic, and that is the language of poor, labourers and migrant workers though it is an old one. For BSP and SP, it is dalits and other backward classes (OBCs),” political analyst Professor Badri Narayan said.
“There is a clear shift in identity. While Congress has grabbed it as an opportunity, Mayawati appears nervous and Akhilesh is not able to negotiate this issue and appears clueless,” he added.
Congress leader Kapoor said while the BSP was completely missing in action during the pandemic, the SP’s work was limited to a few social media messages. “Migrant workers can clearly see that only Congress is coming to their help in these trying times,” he added.
But the BSP said it was working silently for the deprived people, including the migrant workers. “We do it quietly and silently and don’t make propaganda of it. Covid-19 is a big humanitarian crisis and we should have some conscience to help the poor without politicising it,” said BSP leader Antu Mishra.
Mayawati did comment on the issue on Wednesday when she accused both the Congress and the BJP of politicising the issue and insisted that the BSP does not engage in any “disgusting” politics.
“The disgusting politics being done in the past several days, specially by the BJP and Congress in the name of sending migrant labourers home is most unfortunate. Are these parties accusing each other in connivance to divert attention from the tragedy?” she tweeted.
“If it is not so then the BSP has to say that instead of insisting on sending migrants by buses, Congress should help them go home by trains by arranging their tickets,” the BSP chief said in another tweet.
The SP too took the same line of argument. “Our approach is more practical and pragmatic and our workers available on the ground to provide help to the migrant workers. But we are not in the game of offering buses. We can create an event out of it but we agree that a sustained process can only be done by the government,” SP spokesperson Abhishek Mishra said.
“There should be serious political consequences for this huge migrant crisis triggered by the policy failures on part of the government but ultimately it depends on the people to judge that. This kind of mass migration is unprecedented in the history of India,” he added.
For his part, the SP chief was more critical of the BJP than the Congress. “The tales of migrant labourers struggling to reach home are saddening. They are getting killed in accidents daily. But an unconcerned BJP has no care for human values. It is exploiting their eagerness to reach home for its political self-interest,” Yadav said in a statement.
