Congress leaders in Etawah have refused to campaign for the probable Samajwadi Party candidates in the district for next year’s Assembly elections, alleging that Akhilesh Yadav “doesn’t deserve the support of those who believe in the democratic process”.
The SP has traditionally contested all five Assembly seats in Etawah district, the family borough to which late party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav traces his roots. The SP currently has MLAs in three of the seats, while the BJP has legislators in the remaining two.
Although no seat-sharing deal has been finalised yet between the SP and the Congress, the five Assembly seats in Etawah have for long been non-negotiable for the SP.
Several local Congress leaders have quit their posts to protest the party’s failure to make the SP budge from its stand. “It is true,” Zamil Qureshi, who has quit as general secretary of the party’s minority cell in Uttar Pradesh, told The Telegraph, asked about the reports of the resignations.
“The Congress leadership has surrendered before the SP when a large number of voters want to dethrone the BJP and are looking at us as an option. Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims don’t trust the SP, but what will they do if the Congress doesn’t stand up as an alternative to the BJP?” Qureshi said. “We were put in jail during Mulayam’s rule when we opposed the atrocities against our leaders in the early 90s. Now, we are expected to support his party.”
Vachaspati Dwivedi of Etawah, who recently resigned as Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee spokesperson, told this newspaper: “A dozen of us have resigned from our posts but remained with the party. We cannot defend the party before the people.... We wanted to contest Etawah Sadar and Sikandra, but we have heard that our state leadership has rejected the idea.”
“The BJP’s Sarita Bhadauria and Ajit Pal Singh defeated the SP candidates in Etawah Sadar and Sikandra in 2017 and 2022. Why shouldn’t the Congress contest these two seats this time, especially when we can see that every voter except the castemen of Samajwadi leaders is eager to support us against the BJP?” Dwivedi asked.
“Mulayam used to cry before Congress chief ministers Veer Bahadur Singh and N.D. Tiwari to leave Etawah for him. These leaders considered his request without realising the fact that we are in politics to contest and win elections. Soon after coming to power, Mulayam ordered the arrest of our leaders in Etawah. Ask our old guard, they will tell you about the atrocities inflicted on them by Mulayam and his family members,” Dwivedi added.
After the BJP came to power in the country in 2014, Mulayam had openly said the Congress was “more harmful” for the country than any other party.
Pallav Dubey, who was the Congress’s Etawah city president till a few weeks ago, said: “It is a big question why the Congress wants to stand with the SP in a city where A.O. Hume conceived the idea of forming the Congress in the 19th century. We are shaking hands with a party that treats us as an enemy since Mulayam’s time. He never allowed any Congress programme in Etawah, Mainpuri, Firozabad and Kannauj.”
“We re-energised the party in 2020 and I went to jail 14 times for protesting against the BJP government. But all our efforts have gone to waste as our leaders are asking us to support the SP. It is not possible for us. We have told this to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi,” Dubey said.
Khadim Abbas, a politician turned journalist in Etawah, said: “There is distrust for the SP here because it is the party of one caste (Yadavs). Another thing is that it is a party of one family, which keeps empowering itself at the people’s expense.
"The time is in favour of the Congress but the Congress is not in its own favour. The Congress has in recent years made Yadavs its district president. Do you think a Yadav will work against the SP?"