What is the reason for keeping alive the dying coalition politics in UP?

Congress and Samajwadi Party are full of political energy after coming under one umbrella. The leadership of both the parties is trying to create such an atmosphere as if now it is ‘game over’ for BJP in Uttar Pradesh. An attempt was made to create a similar environment in the 2017 Assembly elections and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The special thing about both the contests was that Samajwadi Party was a major player in the battle of the opponents to sideline BJP in UP. Samajwadi Party had fought the 2017 assembly elections by joining hands with Congress. There was an alliance between Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Both the times when the election results came, the graph of the alliance parties was visible on the ground.

During the 2017 assembly elections, the NDA alliance i.e. BJP Plus got a total of 325 seats. Out of these, BJP alone had fielded its candidates on 384 seats and won 312 seats. Among the other two parties of the BJP alliance, Apna Dal (Sonelal) won nine out of 11 seats and Bharatiya Suheldev Samaj Party won four out of eight seats. As the main opposition parties, SP and Congress were completely rejected by the public. Then this alliance had to be satisfied with only 54 seats. Congress had won only seven out of 114 seats in the elections, while Samajwadi Party had won only 47 seats out of 311 seats. Similarly, if we talk about 2019 Lok Sabha, then there was an alliance between SP and BSP. Even then, the same atmosphere was created as was tried to be created in 2017. But this time also the results came in favor of BJP. Samajwadi Party had won only five seats and BSP had won only ten seats.

Why do these parties unite even after such poor performance? The reason for this is a hope? The hope is that they can defeat BJP with the help of Muslim votes because they all feel that Hindus are divided among themselves. Due to this, non-BJP leaders remain silent on the atrocities on Hindus, whereas if even a small incident happens with Muslims, they unite heaven and earth. Remember when Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra raise their heads to the sky even at the slightest incident in BJP ruled states. Especially these people raise the cases of harassment of women in a very sharp manner. Rahul-Priyanka had strongly raised the Hathras issue of UP a few years ago during the first term of the Yogi government. Then it came to light that a Dalit girl was raped and then murdered. On October 1, 2020, when Priyanka Gandhi was going from Delhi to meet the family of the Hathras victim, the police stopped her convoy near Greater Noida. Then she told the media that she also has a daughter, so as a mother she gets very angry with such incidents. Priyanka had fiercely questioned the Yogi government regarding the Unnao rape case. His activity in this matter was clearly visible. Firstly, the case was of a BJP ruled state, secondly, a BJP MLA was in the circle of allegations. Priyanka Gandhi, while cornering the Yogi government of Uttar Pradesh, had asked that the government should tell whether it is with women or with criminals? Similarly, on January 21, 2022, a case of murder of a teenage girl came to light in Bulandshahr district of UP. The family members alleged that the girl was murdered after gangrape. Priyanka Gandhi reached Bulandshahr in UP on 3 February 2022, where she met the family members of the victims and made serious allegations against the police and administration. On February 4, 2024, Priyanka Gandhi did not delay in raising the issue of the death of a judge in Banda, Uttar Pradesh on her social media account As a responsible leader and citizen, Priyanka’s outspokenness on the crimes and atrocities against women was commendable, but this pain was an illusion. Actually, she was doing pure politics because all the activism of Priyanka Gandhi is visible only in BJP or NDA ruled states. I don’t know why they get angry only on crimes against women in BJP ruled states, but where there are non-BJP governments, the Gandhi family maintains silence when cases of harassment of women come to light.

On the Manipur violence, every big and small leader of Congress including the Gandhi family made sharp statements against the central government of Manipur and Delhi. The government was put in the dock of the allegations. Modi was repeatedly asked why he does not go to Manipur? But around the same time, Priyanka Gandhi maintained silence in the cases of women harassment in Congress ruled states – Rajasthan (now there is BJP government here), Chhattisgarh and non-BJP ruled states – Bihar, Telangana, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala etc. During the five-year rule of the then Gehlot government in Rajasthan, there was a spate of incidents of rape and harassment of women. Rajasthan will never forget the heinous incidents like atrocities, misconduct and rape that happened to women in Rajasthan due to the failure of Gehlot government in women’s safety, but the Gandhi family neither saw nor heard anything here, the result was that the public Gehlot government was uprooted in the same assembly elections.

It is also necessary to discuss the attitude of Congress and Gandhi family on the incident of atrocities against women in Sandeshkhali, West Bengal. The soul shudders upon hearing the news that is coming out. Several Hindu women of Sandeshkhali have accused local Trinamool Congress leader Shahjahan Shaikh and his supporters of sexually assaulting and raping them overnight in the last few years. According to women’s testimonies based on interviews given to various news channels viral on social media, women are often and haphazardly picked up from their homes at night and taken to the TMC office where they are abused by goons . They are threatened that if they do not obey, their husbands will be killed. As the women have said, this is not a sudden or horrific incident of sexual harassment, but this torture and exploitation of these women had been going on for years. The women allege that even the local police and administration did not listen to them. Mainstream media also reported widely on Sandeshkhali. Yet none of the so-called intellectuals and celebrity brigade uttered a single word of condemnation against the Mamata government. The silence of the leaders of the country’s oldest party, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and her brother Rahul Gandhi on this very sensitive and serious issue also puts them in the circle of questions. Rahul Gandhi is cornering the Central and BJP ruled governments on every small and big issue. In such a situation, the important question is that why did he not seek justice for the victims of Sandeshkhali from the Chief Minister of West Bengal? Priyanka Gandhi’s silence on Sandeshkhali proves that she has nothing to do with women’s safety and the dignity of daughters.

-Ajay Kumar