Congress president Rahul Gandhi is currently collecting feedback from party workers whether to join an alliance or not. The Congress leaders feel that Mayawati and Akhilesh are not willing to allocate more than two seats the party won in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Mayawati had blamed the Congress for failure to reach any understanding on seats in the recent assembly elections in Rajasthan Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In order to embarrass Congress Mayawati joined hands with Ajit Jogi in Chattisgarh, although the move could not damage the party, which recorded an impressive victory in the tribal-dominated state.

Shocked by humiliation in recent elections, Mayawati is not willing leave seats to Congress in UP. This is more or less the approach of Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh too. As he is not willing to antagonise Mayawati at this stage, he is also not willing leave more seats to Congress.

Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi, however, said that the issue of joining an alliance was still open, provided the party got a respectable number of seats to contest. Senior Congress leaders feel that party is on a revival path with the backing of people, who are fed up with the Modi and Yogi governments.

According to a senior party leader, who was instrumental in leading the Congress campaign in Chhattisgarh, with a good strategy in place his party could get more than 22 seats in UP. These leaders believe that Congress should not have joined hands with Akhilesh Yadav in the 2017 assembly polls when the party got only six seats with just six percent vote share. They feel that party would have done much better if there was no alliance with Akhilesh Yadav.

The Congress party paid a heavy price due to anti-incumbency of Samajwadi Party in the elections. The Samajwadi Party itself could not do much and got less than 50 seats in UP despite the joint campaign by Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav.

Senior Congress leaders feel that the Congress party started losing ground since 1996 when it entered into an alliance with BSP. The party had entered the alliance when Narasimha Rao was PM. As per the seat sharing arrangement, the BSP contested 300 seats while 125 were left for Congress. But the alliance flopped miserably and Mayawati blamed that the Congress voters did not vote for BSP candidates. Whether it was 1996 or 2017, the Congress voters opted for BJP than supporting SP or BSP.

Now in order to retain support in all the 80 Lok Sabha seats and keep the party workers engaged the leaders want Congress to keep away from any alliance so that they could do well in the 2022 assembly polls.

There is no doubt that the general sentiment in the party is against joining the alliance with SP and BSP, but the final decision has to be taken by party president Rahul Gandhi. (IPA Service)