Will the Grand Old Congress Party forge an electoral alliance with the ruling Samajwadi Party in UP before the ensuing Assembly polls? The two parties have been working closely behind the scenes to cut a deal for their survival, as an alliance will have a significant impact. After all it is the arithmetic and not the chemistry which matters in elections. The fact that the SP is even considering an alliance is seen as its nervousness about coming back. More than the 2017 UP Assembly polls the Congress is looking to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

In the 2012 Assembly elections the SP won 224 seats and 29.15 per cent vote share emerging as the single largest party, while the Congress won 28 seats and 11.6 per cent of the vote share compared with 15 per cent for the BJP and nearly 26 per cent for the BSP. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, however, the BJP alone secured a vote share of 42.63 per cent, and won 72 out of the 80 seats in the state riding on the Modi wave. The first choice for an alliance for the Congress is the BSP but BSP supremo Mayawati had rejected the idea of a pre-poll alliance with any party. So for the sake of Muslim and Backward Classes votes, the Congress is forced to look in the direction of the SP.

The negotiations are at the level of UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and the Congress Vice president Rahul Gandhi who feels that he can do business with the young Yadav. Akhilesh had stated publicly last month that a Congress-SP alliance would win 300 seats. Whether they can form a strong, workable coalition will also show their grip over their respective parties. The electoral arithmetic seems to have convinced leaders in both parties about the advantage of such an alliance, but the SP leadership is not yet ready to commit. The final word has to come from Mulayam Singh Yadav who has reservations about a tie up. The SP and the BSP have pushed the Congress to the margins in the past two decades.

Even within the Congress there is a dilemma about the alliance. There is a core group for UP affairs consisting of the General Secretary in-charge of UP Ghulam Nabi Azad, PCC chief Raj Babbar, campaign chief Pramod Tiwari and the chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dixit. Of them Raj Babbar was in SP earlier while Pramod Tiwari is said to be close to Mulayam Singh.

The Congress is divided as one section feels they should go ahead with the alliance, as it would indeed boost the prospects of the party, another section feels that they should stick to their original game plan .

The party has already started its Uttar Pradesh campaign with veteran Sheila Dixit as its chief ministerial candidate. Going for an alliance means accepting Akilesh as the chief ministerial face, which would mean withdrawing Sheila as the party’s poll face. This section strongly feels that unless the party gets 125 seats, there should not be an alliance.

The Congress has been trying to come back since 1989 when N.D. Tiwari was the last Congress chief minister. While Rahul Gandhi’s Kisan yatra was making a buzz during the initial campaign, the party’s position dipped after the BJP government’s surgical strikes inside Pak-occupied Kashmir. The rumour about Priyanka Gandhi campaigning all over the state for the party also has subsided. The feedback from the public after the ill-planned demonetisation move has emboldened the Congress to look for an alliance. The Congress strategists feel that an alliance could save the party from another embarrassing defeat. The Congress leaders feel Modi would become unstoppable if the BJP wins UP while a defeat would be seen as a rejection of his perceived adventurism.

Secondly, this alliance can reinforce the Muslim-Yadav combination, which would improve the chances of both the Congress and the SP. Also, they believe that the Muslim tilt towards the BSP can be stopped.

It is a million dollar question whether they will really announce the alliance. The Congress is looking for an improvement on the 29 seats it won in 2012. It had come second in 50 other constituencies. Mulayam Singh is a tough bargainer and will not agree to give more than 70 seats while the Congress, being a national party wants to contest in at least 125 seats. This is the main hitch. Also there is suspicion about the SP chief. In 1991 Mulayam had agreed to an alliance with the Congress after detailed negotiations with then Congress President Rajiv Gandhi. Singh drove a hard bargain all night and finally inked the deal in the early hours of the morning, but after going back to Lucknow he had called off the alliance. Moreover, even last year Mulayam had backed out of the Grand Alliance in Bihar consisting of the Congress, JD (U) and other smaller parties at the last minute.

Although negotiations are taking place at the level of Akhilesh and Rahul Gandhi, the former who has recently been asserting his command over the party, is still not the final word in SP. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, now the de-facto head of the party, is known for painfully slow decision-making. The complaint in the Congress is that despite inputs decisions are not taken at the right time.

The other opposition parties like the Trinamool are watching closely as they feel such a secular alliance could be taken forward for the 2019 Lok sabha polls to defeat Modi. UP will be a test case for the realignment of political parties as it might give a hint about the future.