Rahul Gandhi Has Single-Handedly Taken On PM And His Cabinet Ministers In Gujarat, It’s Giving BJP Jitters In UP, Says Raj Babbar

Raj Babbar is Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president and a Member of Parliament with five terms in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. He speaks about the oncoming Mayoral and civic polls in the state in an interview with Pragya Singh.

Even civic polls in UP are making news this year. Why and how is this election so important?

It is important because this year the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to ensure that somehow they are victorious. While it is true that the Congress is on the margins right now in UP civic bodies but the BJP has clubbed these mayoral and civic polls with polls in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat is around the corner too. So in this their strategy is very clear. After all in Gujarat we in the Congress party are directly competing against them. This is what they are doing. If they do well here they want a chance to say ‘oh look in North India we are the only party, Congress has nothing here.’

Will they prove themselves right?

Not at all—this strategy of theirs shows their insecurity, their sheer desperation. They have the chief minister of the most populous state roaming around in towns and cities, giving these civic polls so much importance because they are anxious. They are going repeatedly to Ayodhya, they are calling people like Sri Sri Ravishankar…all this jugglery is happening because they can see very clearly their fall and they want to create atmospherics to try and prove the contrary.

What is your party doing about this; what is your goal and strategy?

We believe that in the past three years the government (at the center) has not fulfilled its promises. Then came notebandi (demonetization) and they fooled people across the country in the name of serving the nation. Then they unleashed the GST fiasco. There has been no development, no employment-generation and no bringing back black money. In fact, what our former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said, that the GDP would fall by two per cent at least, has come true. We also see that people are realizing that they have been taken for a ride and so they are making a choice now.

Many see this local-body election as a referendum on UP’s future?

There is a great insecurity in the BJP’s mind because they have been systematically targeted by Rahul Gandhi (Congress Party VP). He is one man and he has taken on, single-handedly, the Prime Minister and his 35 cabinet ministers in Gujarat. Most of the BJP’s leaders touring around in Gujarat and elsewhere have been brought in from outside, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for instance. There are at least 50 leaders roaming around in Uttar Pradesh too. All of these our one leader is tackling effectively, vociferously and…

Still, the public mood in UP isn’t strongly against demonetization. Many feel it was a great move badly implemented.

The public mood in Uttar Pradesh you can sense from what happened in Chitrakoot legislative assembly seat. This is on the border with Uttar Pradesh on the Madhya Pradesh side. Our leader Neelanshu Chaturvedi defeated the BJP even before voting could take place. This seat was vacated due to the demise of the sitting MLA (Prem Singh of Congress Party). Their chief minister Shivraj Chauhan had camped in Chitrakoot for several days and they had sent UP deputy-CM Keshav Prasad Maurya too. Still the BJP candidate was defeated, by a much-younger man. So they have realized that the public has turned against them and they are in any way trying to defend their actions. This is what prompts them to keep talking about the Congress—‘look, look, they have nothing.’

Can you do anything about this?

We are trying to convince people—Rajiv Gandhi dreamed once of decentralized power and development from the ground up. This is what frightens the BJP too. Yes we were zero in terms of the corporations in UP and had only one chairman so they must have thought that they can adopt any plank and defeat us. Chitrakoot proved the opposite.

Congress tried to forge an alliance with the Samajwadi Party but that didn’t work out.

You see, the local body elections in any state are in a large part about cadre votes and mobilization. The cadre is something that any party always has to keep in mind. If we do a tie-up then the workers do get de-motivated. In many places we can understand this sentiment. We don’t want workers to experience any kind of setback. We want to take this election for what it is—not a referendum but as a small election. For the workers these elections are a great opportunity to show their faces to the public. This opportunity no party would deny its people.

What would be the cornerstone of your outreach to the public?

We ask the public, show us the medical facilities, the schools, the development, the law and order that was promised to people in UP by the government. Like the PM, the CM has also only made noises. Their idea is to have an election in which they play up distances and differences between people, so that they are not able to think about their needs. The gali-mohallas, let me tell you, are not interested in divisive politics. We are doing lots and lots of interaction with people and finding that people are not buying the BJP’s ideas any longer. They are trying to think for themselves and talk freely…

It is being said that in these elections there is very little visibility of Muslims. That Hindu seers, saints and babas have stolen the show. Earlier people from all faiths would walk together to canvass for candidates. What has changed?

There is no such thing. One candidate of ours visited a baba, but she is a female, a woman baba—and her followers are indeed from all faiths. Muslims visit her, Hindus visit her, Sikhs visit her and people consider her very kind and helpful. She is actually rooted in the old traditions of Uttar Pradesh. As for Congress, everybody is working for us. I simply can’t see any Hindu-Muslim divide here.

Why did some of your party shift to BJP for these local polls?

Well, wo toh hamarey saarey hi le gaye…they have taken so many of our leaders. Now if they are saying they are different how is it possible? In Allahabad, Banaras, Kanpur, Agra, Saharanpur and Lucknow ask anybody and we are giving a straight fight to the BJP. They are quite scared and Congress is fighting hard. They have tried to manage many places, I feel, by juggling the seats around for OBC and women candidates but this time the mood is against them.