Congress may have taken advantage of the Hathras incident – the rape and subsequent death of a 19-year-old Dalit woman – but the party now faces the challenge of maintaining momentum in the politically important state of Uttar Pradesh, where it has been relegated. to the margins in the last three decades.
Images of Uttar Pradesh police abusing Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday and his sister and general secretary of the party in charge of Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who were on their way to Hathras on Saturday to meet with the family of the woman who died On a Tuesday, a fortnight after she was allegedly gang-raped in her village, the Delhi hospital has been widely shared on social media.
They also seem to have emboldened party leaders and workers to sharpen their attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) both in the state and in the Center.
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“These images are disturbing and have shaken not just congressional leaders and workers, but the entire country. How can a policeman misbehave with a woman? And this happened to someone who has Z plus security coverage, ”said Srinivas BV, President of the Youth Congress.
Several Congressional leaders, including Kerala’s former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, compared Hathras’ visit by the Gandhi brothers to Indira Gandhi’s visit to Belchi in Bihar in 1977. It is said that he revived the electoral fortunes of Congress after his humiliating defeat in the 1977 national campaign. elections.
Indira Gandhi traveled by train, jeep and tractor and rode an elephant to reach the village of Belchi, where 10 Dalits had been massacred. Three years later, Congress took power in the 1980 Lok Sabha elections.
But the BJP described the Gandhi brothers’ visit to Hathras as “political tourism” and accused Congress of politicizing the issue. At the center of the storm, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said opponents of development were trying to stoke caste and communal unrest in the state.
Congressional leaders say the party plans to aggressively raise the Hathras issue in the upcoming assembly elections in Bihar and other states (including Uttar Pradesh) where preliminary elections will be held next month.
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But the great task of the opposition party will be to ensure that the momentum generated by the Hathras incident is sustained in the run-up to the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Also in the past, the match created a stir at times, but could not sustain it. The Gandhi brothers, especially Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were at the forefront of the agitation against the amendment to the citizenship law late last year, visiting the families of those killed in violent protests by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). ) and the pan- Exercise of the National Register of Citizens of India (NRC).
Congress tried to harness the anger of young people, especially students, against the BJP, but the momentum soon died down.
Similarly, the party clearly stole the spotlight from the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on the crisis of migrant workers traveling back to Uttar Pradesh during the coronavirus disease-induced national lockdown. with his aggressive stance against the BJP.
While the BJP and Congress spoke out openly, the two regional parties, SP and BSP, surprisingly watched events from a distance.
But after a few video messages, Congress apparently lost a beat.
This time, however, congressional leaders say they will not let the BJP government run out of control in the UP. “The Hathras incident has shocked India. He has highlighted the situation in UP. Such incidents occur almost every day in the state and law and order have completely collapsed. The BJP government wants to mock him, but this will not be allowed, ”said Congress leader Jitin Prasada.
“Politics is one thing and the other is really feeling for the aggrieved. We will do what an opposition party has to do, but this incident is heartbreaking. We will not allow the BJP government to run out of control in UP, ”he added.
One of the reasons identified by policy experts for the lack of momentum on any issue is the lack of organizational structure on the ground, given that the party has been out of power for more than three decades since 1989.
“Over the years, Congress has ceded its political space to other parties and its traditional voting base has changed. While his Dalit vote went to BSP, Muslims sided with the SP and the upper castes sided with the BJP. Congress has also not taken any concrete steps to strengthen the organization over the years, ”said Professor Ramkishor Shastri, a political analyst from Allahabad.
“In 2009, Congress won 22 seats in Lok Sabha. It could have used that opportunity to strengthen its organizational structure, but it did not, ”he added.
Having been decimated in UP in the 2017 assembly elections and in this year’s Lok Sabha polls, Congress is struggling to make its presence felt on the state’s political landscape. The party had dominated UP politics until the Mandal-Mandir problems emerged in the late 1980s. Over the years, it has been relegated to the political fringes. The party even lost its traditional stronghold of Amethi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with BJP’s Smriti Irani defeating Rahul Gandhi.
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