Congress Search For Allies Falters

The Congress hopes for alliances have run into rough weather in various states. Even as they grappled with the Mamata Bannerjee-led split in the West Bengal unit yesterday, the partys leaders were also worried about their prospective alliances in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

The Congress brass yesterday virtually abandoned its efforts to forge an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party tieup in Uttar Pradesh, which is likely to be the key to whether or not the BJP can form the next government. A meeting of senior leaders from the state decided to contest all 85 Lok Sabha seats up for grabs there.

 

An All-India Congress Com-mittee office-bearer acknowled-ged that this amounted to giving up most of the states seats to the BJP but argued that it was up to the other parties that have a support base in UP to acknowledge this and agree to ally with the Congress.

The Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party have recently declared their intention to contest all 85 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Most analysts believe that if the two join hands, they could defeat the BJP. But the BJP is expected to sweep to victory in most of the UP seats if the SP and the BSP contest the elections separately.

AICC general secretary Tariq Anwar yesterday publicly complained that parties which claim to be determined to fight the BJP are refusing to ally with the Congress in UP, the BJPs stronghold. UP Congress Committee chief N D Tiwari added a veiled threat, saying his party did not want to obstruct any alliances but did not understand the unwillingness to ally in UP.

His reference was obviously to Maharashtra, where Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is eager to have a seat adjustment with the Congress. Yadav is reported to have secretly reached an understanding with Maharashtra Congress leader Sharad Pawar, who has also lined up the Republican Party of India, led by Prakash Ambedkar.

AICC leaders indicated that they were unwilling to allow the SP to ally only with their Maharashtra unit, when UP is the key to the outcome of the elections.

Senior leaders of the Congress Gujarat unit were scheduled to meet leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Party, led by Shankersinh Vaghela, in Gandhinagar late at night yesterday. An AICC general secretary said the talks were stuck over the number of seats each party should contest.

He said the RJP wanted the states 26 seats to be equally divided between both parties. The Congress refuses to negotiate on the 10 it won last year and the six in which it stood second. That would leave only 10 seats for the RJP.

The AICC general secretary added that the prospects for an alliance in Madhya Pradesh were equally bleak, since Chief Minister Digvijay Singh is strongly opposed to aligning with the BSP. Since that party has expanded its base in the state to perhaps 15 per cent of the total vote, mainly at the Congress expense, the BJP could win many of the states 40 seats if the two parties do not accommodate each others claims.

At least part of Singhs problem appears to be BSP chief Kanshi Rams publicly declared intention of ensuring that a tribal is installed as the state chief minister after the polls.

The Congress had made a similar promise before the last assembly elections but then installed Singh, the scion of an erstwhile royal family.

There is also a stalemate over the proposed Congress-BSP alliance in Punjab. The BSP has demanded six of the 13 Lok Sabha seats, while the Congress is willing to give it no more than three.

Their determination has been strengthened after the recent split in the BSPs Punjab unit.

The Congress Karnataka and Andhra units have already been recently split. Although the Congress central leaders insist that Bannerjee in West Bengal, S Bangarappa in Karnataka and the Andhra leaders who have left will hardly dent in the partys vote base, they are obviously less upbeat than they were when elections were announced.