New Delhi: After Mayawati-led BSP played a spoiler in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, Congress is worried whether the elephant would trample its hopes of regaining Karnataka amid a stiff saffron challenge.

The election in Karnataka is not an ordinary one for Congress with many a party leader insisting that a victory in the southern state was crucial for the party and it cannot afford a third successive defeat when a series of Assembly elections are due in the year ahead of the Lok Sabha polls next year.

BSP has already turned a vote cutter for the Congress in Gujarat helping Narendra Modi to post his second successive win and has helped the process of its defeat in Himachal Pradesh.

While the BSP came a cropper in Gujarat, it won a single seat in Himachal Pradesh, but increased its vote share dramatically, from 0.7 per cent in 2003 to 7.26 per cent in 2007.

In Gujarat, its presence marred the prospects of Congress in ten constituencies while the damage in the hill state caused by BSP was also significant. Senior BSP leader Gandhi Azad says that Karnataka is a "fertile ground" for his party and it would contest all the seats.

Karnataka has 23 per cent dalits and any mistake on the part of Congress in strategy could be beneficial for Mayawati to make her first major foray in the South, the AICC general secretary said.

Another Congress leader Margaret Alva, however, feels that Mayawati would not be able to make much of a dent this time as she has no organisation in place.

But Karnataka is not alone. Congress is losing sleep on how to deal with Mayawati, who is set to encroach on the party territory in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. "Only the weak enter into electoral understandings. We are not weak. We will not have alliance with any party in any state in the Assembly polls or the Lok Sabha elections. Our aim is to make Mayawati Prime Minister of the country," Azad told PTI.

In the backdrop of such a BSP attitude, the helpless refrain in the Congress camp is "what can we do when a party is not playing according to the rules of the game and has no stakes in the system".

The meaning of such statements is that the Congress should learn to live with an ambitious and unpredictable BSP. Mayawati is acting as per the tactics of the late Kanshi Ram, founder of the BSP, who used to boast that his party was basically an "opportunist" and was not apologetic about it.

"We revel in more elections, are ready for election after election and the more the election, it is better for us," used to be Kanshi Ram's pet theme. "We contest the first election to lose, the second to defeat and the third to win," has been the unconventional BSP strategy since its inception and Kanshi Ram's chosen successor Mayawati is going methodically about it, addressing rallies after rallies in several states including in Kerala and West Bengal in a bid to make inroads into the established political territory of the left and the right.

The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister is to address a rally in Andhra Pradesh, the only major state in which the Congress is in power on its own, and her party is preparing the groundwork in neighbouring Karnataka.

However, senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, dismisses suggestions that the BSP could make inroads in the two states where Congress has ensured "the best deal" for the weaker sections including dalits through its years of governance.

Mayawati and Congress President appeared to have shared a rare bonhomie last year when the BSP helped the Congress in the Presidential elections with UPA-Left nominee Pratibha Patil making mincemeat of the challenge posed by NDA backed independent Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

It was soon after Mayawati created a record of sorts by making BSP the first regional party to win the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections single handedly, a victory being seen as a defining moment in Indian politics.

But the New Year has seen that the honeymoon between the two parties is over and the Congress is losing no oppportunity to hit out at Mayawati.

Source : PTI