© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
On the third day of the Congress’s Uttar Pradesh Jodo Yatra, modelled on Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, in Muzaffarnagar district, state party president Ajay Rai on Friday said the party would perform better in the coming general elections than in 2009, which marked the party’s best performance in Lok Sabha polls in UP since 1984 as it bagged 21 of the state’s 80 constituencies.
Rai was accompanied by state Congress treasurer Shiv Pandey, vice-president Sharad Mishra, district leaders, and as many as 200 party workers from various districts, with a DJ playing Congress slogans, dhol-nagada music, and locals riding tractor-trolleys in tow.
The UP Jodo Yatra, which began from Saharanpur on Wednesday, is set to cover a total of 11 districts in western and central UP, including Bijnor, Amroha, Moradabad, Rampur, Bareilly, Shahjahanpur, Lakhimpur, Sitapur, and Lucknow.
Led by Rai, the Muzaffarnagar leg of the yatra, which started on Friday from Purkazi and ended at Baseda village, had around 1,000 participants and passed through the narrow lanes of the villages, towns, and markets in the district, also known as the sugarcane belt of UP. While greeting locals along the route, Rai also stopped to hold several brief meetings.
“Sugarcane farmers are worried, they are not being paid, the price of sugarcane is not increasing, (BJP) had promised farmers there would be no electricity bill for irrigation from April. But this has not been fulfilled. The youth are not getting jobs. They had to go to the Parliament to express their protest. Traders’ business is at a standstill. This is why people are supporting us, they want change,” said the state Congress chief.
Rai said the party hopes to improve on its recent electoral performances in the state and the yatra was part of its strategy to reach out to voters and highlight the BJP’s “politics of lies”.
“In 2009, the Congress won 21 seats. Certainly, we will perform much better than this. We have only one strategy — to connect with the public. That is why this yatra is being undertaken. We are continuously working at booth and ward levels. The Bharat Jodo Yatra is not just about taking votes and winning elections. This is for change. The 2024 elections will tell where we stand,” he said.
Sharad Mishra, UP Congress vice-president, said people were afraid of expressing their views due to the fear of the BJP-led government. “We are taking this message to the public about the way this environment has been created where people are afraid of saying anything because they don’t know what might happen. This sentiment is not good for democracy. The Congress is the only party in which a person of every class and social status can find a place. This is not the case in every party. The Congress is the mainstream of this country,” Mishra said.
Mishra claimed that the Congress has not taken credit for its work. “Congress has done a lot of development, but we did very little publicity. Today the government is selling many PSUs, who built those? Nobody is against the Ram temple, Ram is our maryada purushottam. The public will understand the BJP’s game very soon,” he said.
Rakesh Kumar Paswan, the state vice-president of the Congress’s Scheduled Caste department, said while people were drawn to the party it lacked the resources to reach out to everyone. “The Congress is not a cadre-based party like the BJP. They have a huge system. No matter how good the ideology is, the one that is propagated is what people accept as the truth. The BJP has shown this to be true. We don’t have that big system. We don’t have offices everywhere. This is the struggle we are facing,” said Paswan, who travelled from Allahabad to join the yatra and whose family has been associated with the Congress for four generations.
He added that caste issues often take precedence over development in a state such as UP, which is something the party wants to change. “The politics of UP and Bihar have always been different from the rest of the country. Ever since caste-based parties emerged, the developmental issues have disappeared. With this yatra, we are taking issues to the people,” Paswan said.
“In the end, people will come to the Congress because only here can you raise all kinds of slogans, whether ‘Jai Shri Ram’, ‘Jai Bhim’, ‘Jai Constitution’. Only anti-Constitution is not accepted,” Paswan said.
Vishwanath Chaudhary, 37, who joined the yatra from the Basti district and has been associated with the Congress since 2009 through student politics, said the youth were increasingly seeing the Congress as an electorally viable option.
“What happened in the Parliament (security breach) is very unfortunate, but the government should listen to the issues raised by (the protesters). Unemployment is increasing every day and nobody is listening to the youth. The Congress should do more at the booth level to address the issues. I have seen an improvement in the working of the party, but I feel we should do more. Youth are considering the Congress as an option,” Chaudhary said.
But not everyone is convinced by the Congress’s outreach. Taahir, a 38-year-old farmer from Purkazi who followed the yatra said, “Leaders keep promising that sugarcane farmers will get a fair price, dues will be cleared within a fixed period and crops will be purchased at the MSP. I am tired of hearing all this. I had just come to see if the Congress is bringing anything new this time.”
Islamuddin, a 55-year-old labourer from Baraut in Baghpat district, said that while the Yogi Adityanath government had curbed crime, it had failed to reduce inflation. “I think the Congress will support the poor. We have seen many governments and the reality is that there will not be much change in the condition of workers” he said.
