Are Congress leaders working for Mulayam Singh Yadav on the sly?

The Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is apparently burning the midnight oil to find an issue on which he can anchor his 2017 Assembly election campaign in Uttar Pradesh. But surprisingly his own men are working overtime to puncture his plan. Rahul has entrusted young state leaders to find out potential issues on which the Congress can capitalise. Suggestions have come thick and fast. From the farmer's plight to the anti-Muslim posture adopted by some BJP leaders, the party is hoping the issues raised by them will find favour with a particular class or community which they can turn into a vote bank in the 2017 polls.

"The BJP has a major chunk of upper caste Hindus with it. The SP have the Yadavs and Muslim vote bank. The BSP has a section of the Dalit vote bank. But we have nothing as such in our basket. This is why we need to look for a strong issue which can create a strong vote bank for us," a senior Congress leader told me.

He said after long discussions, the party has reached a conclusion that wooing college and university youths would be the best bet because other parties have not been focusing directly on them. 

But there are problems. The Congress leader admitted that there were some senior party leaders who were acting as the "Team B" of the ruling SP in the state.

The Congress sources confirm this development. Some senior Congress leaders, including a Rajya Sabha member, and a former state president, are said to be working in favour of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the SP. These leaders have reportedly met and promised Mulayam that they would convince Rahul to contest in 2017 in coordination with the SP. In return for their promise, the SP government has quickly and quietly released funds for works like construction of roads or electrification in the areas of these leaders.

A complaint was recently made to the Congress general secretary-in-charge of UP, Madhusudan Mistry and the UP Congress committee president, Nirmal Khatri about these "Congress courtiers" of Mulayam. But so far the Congress state leaders say that the high command has not met these "courtiers" let alone seeking an explanation from them for their behaviour.

Instead, Mistry has suggested to the complainants that they find out the weaknesses of the Narendra Modi government rather than trying to find fault in their own party leaders.

This is not the first time the Congress has faced such a crisis in UP. A similar situation had risen in 2007 when Digvijaya Singh was the party in-charge of the state. Under tremendous influence of the "courtiers" of Mulayam, Digvijaya had tried every trick to forge a seat-sharing alliance with the SP. However, this plan was shot down by Rahul at the eleventh hour because he wanted equal seat sharing, which the SP did not want to give. Observers say such a situation is likely this time too, despite the "courtiers" influence because Rahul will not accept a younger brother's status in UP.