Ahead of UP Assembly polls, Congress turns to EBC outreach in bid to recreate 2024 Lok Sabha 'magic'

With just less than ten months left for Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Congress is changing gears in the state seeking to attract Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) to its fold by holding a meeting in Lucknow in mid-June after organising similar programmes for other groups in the past months.

Sources said the party is seeking to consolidate OBC castes and communities like Nai, Rajbhar, Nishad, Kashyap and Vishwakarma among others, which are identified as extremely backward and account for around 26% as per unofficial estimates. The total OBC count is put at over 50% though a caste count has not been conducted in the state.

Congress has already conducted targeted meetings with farmers, lawyers, Jats, Gurjars, Passi, Nishad, Lodhi and upper castes among others in the past months and is now expanding its outreach with a hope that the party could recreate the Lok Sabha ‘magic’ when the party won six seats with the Samajwadi Party riding on a campaign centred around saving Constitution.

Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday returned to the theme at the ‘Bahujan Swabhiman Sabha’ in Rae Bareli calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah as “traitors” amid BJP’s objections. He asked what else one would call other than traitors if someone “weakens and destroys” the Constitution.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has already made it clear that the I.N.D.I.A bloc would be intact in UP and the “issue is victory and not seats”.  UP Congress Media Department Vice Chairman Manish Hindvi said the Congress is taking all steps to ensure victory.

Congress had lost its influence in UP following the emergence of ‘mandal’ and ‘kamandal’ politics in the 1990s and several caste groups shifted to Samajwadi Party, BSP and BJP. The party now believes it could gain from the acceptability of Rahul who is espousing the social justice and anti-communal plank.

As part of its plan to rejuvenate its grassroot organisation, the Congress had decided to fight the MLC elections as well as panchayat polls. Congress General Secretary and UP in-charge Avinash Pande had earlier said that the plan is to fight all seats in 57,961 panchayats, 826 blocks and around 3,500 seats in 75 district panchayats.

Sources said the party has already identified around 100 seats as winnable and expects to get 80 seats allotted by the alliance partners. In 2017 Assembly polls when SP and Congress fought together, Congress had won seven of the 114 seats it contested with a vote share of 6.25% but it fell to two out of 399 with a vote share of 2.33% in 2022 when both parties fought separately.

Samajwadi Party had contested 311 seats and won 47 in 2017 with a vote share of 21.82% while five years later, it won 111 out of 347 it contested with a vote share of 32.06%.

However in Lok Sabha polls, SP and Congress came together and won 37 and six seats respectively with a vote share of 33.59% and 9.46%. Both the parties now hope to recreate the 2024 results.