NEW DELHI: Congress managers are hopeful that the recent Lok Sabha bypoll pacts in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra could offer a template for a wider anti-BJP alliance ahead of the 2019 national elections.
Keen to shed its big brother image, which used to put off the regional parties, and to keep the Opposition unity intact, the Congress has not fielded its candidate in the Kairana Lok Sabha bypoll in western UP, where the Samajwadi Party is supporting the Rashtriya Lok Dal nominee Tabassum Hasan, a former BSP MP who later shifted to the SP and joined the RLD just days before she was named the joint Opposition candidate. Interestingly, the RLD had stayed away from the SP-Congress alliance for the 2017 Assembly polls in UP, but is on the board now.
Sources said while the Kairana deal was sealed between SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary, AICC in-charge of UP Ghulam Nabi Azad and state party chief Raj Babbar played a key role in keeping the allies together.“We have around 2.5 lakh votes in the area but we still decided to support a joint candidate to defeat the BJP,” Babbar told The Sunday Standard.
SP leader Neeraj Shekhar, son of former prime minister Chandra Shekhar, termed the pact a good beginning. “We hope such cooperation can be extended to the 2019 national polls,” he said.
In Maharashtra, Congress veteran Ashok Gehlot and Nationalist Congress Party’s Praful Patel readily agreed that the regional party will decide its candidate for the Bhandara-Gondia Lok Sabha bypoll while the grand old party’s Damodar Shingda gets to fight the Palghar bypoll. The Bhandara-Gondia seat was vacated after sitting BJP lawmaker Nana Patole, who had defeated Patel in the 2014 national polls, joined the Congress in January.
Sources said the Congress central leadership, for the sake of larger alliance its hopes to work out ahead of the 2019 national elections, overruled the concerns among sections of partymen in Maharashtra that the Bhandara-Gondia seat should have come to the Congress (as Patole had joined the Congress and not the NCP).
“It benefits both the parties if they work together. This arrangement can be extended to the next
Lok Sabha polls,” AICC in-charge of Maharashtra Mohan Prakash said.Though it was first decided that Praful Patel would contest the bypoll from Bhandara-Gondia, his close aide Madhukar Kukade has been fielded so that the NCP veteran could retain his Rajya Sabha seat. Besides, Patel was keener to fight the next general election rather than becoming MP for less than a year.Prakash said joint meetings between the state units of the two parties would be held soon to chalk out strategy for the May 28 bypolls.