Safely Cornered Out There

With less than a year to go before the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, a divided, under-confident and dithering Opposition will grab at every sliver of hope. And the setback to the BJP in the recent panchayat polls has come as a boost for an Opposition that had little to cheer about under Yogi Adityanath’s regime. The setback to the BJP coincided with the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, its litany of unending death and despair playing out before a grossly inadequate healthcare system. It fuelled widespread anger against the government.

This should ideally have rejuvenated a beleaguered Opposition, driving them to chalk out strategies with ­renewed vigour, including the possibility of a united fight against the BJP. But there seems to be no such ­initiative—the big parties lie recumbent.

Political commentators are, unsurprisingly, baffled. “This should have been the moment for the Opposition to go for the kill,” says economist N.K. Choudhary. “Both at state and national levels, mismanagement of the Covid crisis and vaccination drive has not gone down well with people. But the Opposition doesn’t seem to be ready to seize the initiative.”

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According to Choudhary, without a united fight, the Opposition cannot hope to dislodge the Yogi government. “With Congress initiative and support, either Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) or Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party) should be projected as leader of a united front if they want to challenge Yogi in the polls,” he states.

That is easier said than done. Akhilesh and Mayawati did unite to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but their ­alliance fell apart after the BJP won 62 of the 80 seats in UP. Akhilesh had earlier joined hands with the Congress in the 2017 ­assembly polls; that too could not ensure his return to power.

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Understandably, Akhilesh isn’t too keen on alliances with these parties. Mayawati, too, looks all set to go it alone. The Congress may not be averse to the idea of a united fight, though it is hoping for a grand revival of its fortunes ­bec­ause of Priyanka Gandhi’s pro-active role in UP politics in the past few years.

All this must encourage Yogi, who cares little if Opposition parties unite on a common platform or stay apart. “It will not make any difference. They have already put up united fights against us with all their strength, ­without any success in the past,” the CM tells Outlook.

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Truly, it is not as if the Opposition has never had issues to corner the Yogi government until now. In the past four years, incidents like the Hathras gang-rape, killing of gangster Vikas Dubey in an alleged encounter, death of children in a Gorakhpur hospital and, above all, the ongoing ­farmers’ agitation put the Yogi government in a spot. It’s just that a supine Opposition couldn’t ­muster the energy to take him on.

Inexplicably, neither Akhilesh nor Mayawati sought to mobilise people against the Yogi government. Only the Congress and smaller parties like Rashtriya Lok Dal were pro-active in their support to farmers ­protesting against the Centre’s three controversial farm laws. In January, Akhilesh did set out for a rally in Kannauj, but ended up on a dharna after being stopped by the police in Lucknow itself. However, Samajwadi Party national secretary Rajendra Chaudhary insists that they have been at the forefront in support of the farmers’ movement. “If we have not been out on the streets, how come the government lodged cases against more than 10,000 of our workers?” he asks.

Congress leaders claim it’s their party that is playing the role of the ‘real Opposition’. UP Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu says lakhs of party workers under Priyanka Gandhi’s leadership have been agitating against anti-­people programmes and policies of the Yogi government.

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Interestingly, even as bigger parties slumber on, smaller players have taken the initiative to stitch together a ­common electoral front. Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, which won five seats in the Bihar assembly polls last year, has forged an alliance—the Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha—with parties such as Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, which wields influence in ­certain pockets. Rajbhar was part of the NDA during the last polls, but quit before the 2019 parliamentary polls. Since then, he says, he has waited in vain for Akhilesh’s invitation for talks on a possible alliance.

Though there is always a possibility of an ­alliance in an election until the last minute, UP right now looks set for a multi-cornered ­contest yet again. Yogi should not mind that.