New Delhi: Congress in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has decided not to put up a candidate against Dimple Yadav in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha by-poll, informed sources said on Wednesday. According to sources, Priyanka’s move may be seen as a friendly gesture towards the former ally Samajwadi Party and shows the grand old party’s regard for former chief minister late Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had backed the previous UPA government at the centre.
The Mainpuri Lok Sabha by-poll has been necessitated following the recent passing away of Mulayam Singh. Following his death, former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had deputed veterans Mallikarjun Kharge, Kamal Nath and Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Bhagel to attend Mulayam Singh’s cremation at his native place Saifai, in western UP.
Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and Rajya Sabha member Pramod Tewari had attended the ceremony in his personal capacity. Later, a host of senior leaders including Salman Khurshid and Sachin Pilot had visited Saifai to express solidarity with Akhilesh Yadav. Dimple Yadav, who is the daughter-in-law of late Mulayam Singh and the wife of former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, has been fielded by the SP to take electoral benefit from the sympathy factor that will operate in Mainpuri following the death of the party founder, who was fondly referred to as Netaji.
Earlier, Dimple had represented the neighbouring Kannauj parliamentary constituency in the Lok Sabha. Though the decision not to put up a candidate in Mainpuri was taken by Priyanka after consulting Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, officially the party denied the move should be seen as a favour to the SP.
“We are not fighting the Mainpuri by poll. We have set a different target to revive the party in the state and are working hard for it. Why get entangled in a Lok Sabha by-poll in between? It will only divert our attention from the organization and bring no immediate gains for us in Parliament,” UP Congress chief Brijlal Khabri told this channel.
According to Khabri, who was recently given the charge of the politically crucial state by Priyanka, the Congress is preparing ground for the coming local body polls likely to be held in December. “We have to rebuild the party from the ground level. We want to start from the local body polls level and then scale up,” said Khabri.
When Priyanka appointed Khabri to the key post, she also experimented with a new concept of having six zones in charge, that will take care of the different regions of the big state. “I have asked the six zones in charge to travel in their respective areas and meet both the voters and the party workers. I am also touring the state assembly-wise. Our effort is to strengthen the organization in the state,” said Khabri.
Also read: Bypoll: SP names Dimple Yadav as its candidate from Mainpuri
“We are listening to our workers on what went wrong over the past years and trying to take corrective measures to form strong teams at the booth and block level,” he said. According to party insiders, the new team faces an uphill task in reviving the grand old party in UP, where it has been on the margins for almost three decades.
The Congress had 28 MLAs in the 403-member UP assembly in 2012 and came down to seven MLAs in 2017 and just two in 2022 polls. However, the Congress had surprised itself in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when the party won 21 parliamentary seats out of the total 80 in UP. Rahul Gandhi, who was an MP from Amethi, had led an aggressive campaign across the state in favour of the UPA government headed by then prime minister Manmohan Singh.
So enthused was Rahul by the party’s performance in UP that he even campaigned in the Firozabad Lok Sabha by poll in which Congress nominee Raj Babbar defeated Dimple Yadav of SP by over 80,000 votes. Rahul’s campaign had reportedly dented the SP in its strongholds like Tundla, Firozabad, Shikohabad and Jasrana assembly seats that fell under the Firozabad parliamentary constituency.
The grand old party had then attributed the UP results to the development-oriented politics of Rahul Gandhi, who was an AICC general secretary. Interestingly, Rahul pursued a go-alone line in UP in 2016 by taking out a massive east-to-west Kisan rally ahead of the 2017 assembly polls but for some strange reasons opted for an alliance with the SP just months before the elections.
The pact proved to be a disaster for both the Akhilesh Yadav, who was chief minister then and the Congress. The SP came down to 47 seats while the Congress had just seven lawmakers. In 2022, Akhilesh refused to have a tie-up with Congress and went on to become the main opposition to the ruling BJP with 112 MLAs. The Congress was reduced to just two MLAs. In the Lok Sabha, the Congress tally came down from two in 2014 to one in 2019.
