File photo of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav during the 'Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra', in Agra
Credit: PTI Photo
Struggling to remain electorally relevant in Uttar Pradesh, Congress faces an uphill task in the politically most crucial state in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election despite its alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP).
Congress -- which managed to win only two seats and secured a meager 2.33 per cent votes in the state assembly polls held barely two years back -- may be hoping to piggy ride the SP to revive its dwindling electoral fortunes but a close scrutiny of the 17 Lok Sabha seats it has been offered by the SP reveals that the grand old party will find it extremely difficult to make its presence felt in the electoral arena in the state.
Of the 17 seats to be contested by the Congress this time, its candidates had lost their security deposits on as many as 12 seats. These seats included Amroha, Ghaziabad, Fatehpur Sikri, Sitapur, Jhansi, Barabanki, Allahabad, Maharajganj, Deoria and Varanasi.
While on the other seats including Mathura, Bulandshahar, Saharanpur, the Congress candidates had fared dismally and finished behind the three major players- BJP, SP and BSP.
In seats like Mathura, Allahabad, Jhansi and Ghaziabad, the Congress candidates' votes could not even reach six figures.
Even the combined vote share of the SP and Congress candidates on these seats was nowhere near the victorious BJP nominees. Unless the vote share of the SP-Congress alliance increases drastically it can not expect to alter the situation this time also.
Congress' vote share in the state has been declining with every election.
In 2019 LS polls, the grand old party had secured 6.30 per cent votes. It came down drastically to a meager 2.33 per cent in the 2022 assembly polls.
In the 2019 LS polls, Congress could win only the Raebareli seat, where its former president Sonia Gandhi had romped home defeating the BJP nominee. It even lost its bastion of Amethi where union minister Smriti Irani defeated senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
The grand old party has not so far declared its candidates on any of the 17 while the rival BJP and BSP have already declared their candidates on many seats.
According to the political experts, Congress did not have any organisational structure at the grass root level and the party depended heavily on the individual performance of the candidates.
''Congress does not have workers in UP.....it only has leaders,'' said veteran Lucknow based political analyst J P Shukla.