Political messaging at play as Nitish Kumar plans UP rallies

Lucknow: A little over a month after the Janata Dal (United) leaders from Uttar Pradesh (UP) met top party leader and Bihar’s OBC chief minister Nitish Kumar in Patna and urged him to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls from UP’s Phulpur, JD (U) unveiled plans to roll out Kumar’s rallies in UP constituencies with substantial Dalit and OBC presence, including Phulpur, from the New Year.

That the recent loss of key Hindi heartland states might have affected Congress’ standing and its equations with major regional players across the state was evident as JD (U) general secretary KC Tyagi, while talking to HT on phone about Kumar rallies in UP, said in a rather terse tone that “after the recent assembly polls, no one party should now have any illusions about it being the only one wanting to defeat the BJP as others are also capable.”

Given the backdrop, Kumar’s UP rallies would thus be interpreted as pre-poll posturing, both to keep the buzz about him contesting from the state alive as also to rattle the BJP, which after two back-to-back terms in UP under chief minister Yogi Adityanath, looks fairly confident of another good performance in the state with 80 Lok Sabha seats.

However, even more important is the subtle messaging of the proposed rallies to the Congress to concede space to regional players in states like UP, where it doesn’t have much of a presence.

In fact, Tyagi said as much. “In UP, we will ensure that our rallies don’t end up undermining Samajwadi Party’s pre-eminent position as the leading opposition in the state. The Congress too would do well to remember not to ignore (during seat sharing pacts) Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in UP, Nitish Kumar’s JD (U)-Lalu Yadav’s RJD in Bihar, MK Stalin’s DMK in Tamil Nadu, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC in West Bengal, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra,” the JD (U) leader said.

“The rallies would largely be on JD (U) platform as we have had presence in UP when Janata Dal was united. So, on the advice of our local unit in UP, we have started some activities in eastern UP. There could be some joint rallies of opposition bloc but an opposition alliance doesn’t mean that the parties would stop doing their work (to expand their political footprints,” Tyagi said.

Kumar’s rallies are due in places like Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gorakhpur, the bastion of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who after being a five-term Lok Sabha MP is now a party MLA from the region, Azamgarh, Prayagraj and many other places across east and central UP with a sizeable presence of most backwards.

Kumar is a Kurmi, among the biggest non-Yadav OBC groups and his being active in east UP, where BJP despite having some few homegrown Kurmi leaders like UP’s Jal Shakti minister Swatantra Dev, has still backed ally Apna Dal (S), a party with Kurmi leadership, indicates plans to woo nearly 8 per cent Kurmis who it is believed could influence outcome in about 12 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

In November, when the Congress announced its 130-member committee under its new chief Ajay Rai, OBCs and Dalits expectedly dominated the new team and along with Muslims comprised nearly 70 per cent of the total team combination, indicating efforts to get the party on track in UP where it last held power in 1989 and since ceded space to regional players like Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.

“I can’t comment much on the development (Nitish Kumar rallies) and if Congress has been consulted. The Lok Sabha strategy is being decided at the level of the party’s top leadership,” said UP Congress Committee chief Ajay Rai when asked if the grand old party was aware and consulted on key opposition bloc’s player holding rallies in UP. Soon after its loss in three Hindi heartland states, Kumar had suggested that Congress suffered due to ‘overconfidence’ and that it would have to devise a way to take “everyone along”.