Starting with a rally at Jhansi on January 17, to be addressed by AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, the Congress is working out a strategy to undertake agitational programmes against the state government’s policies regarding the acquisition of farmers’ land for the Taj Expressway and the Ganga Expressway projects. These programmes will be finalised at the UP Coordination Committee meeting in Jhansi on January 17.

In the run-up to the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh early this year, the Congress had refrained from criticising the BSP and rather targeted the then Samajwadi Party regime for its failures on the developmental front and for the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s dinner meeting with Mayawati at the latter’s residence in New Delhi in June — following which the Chief Minister agreed to support the UPA’s presidential nominee — was the high point in the relationship between the two parties.

The two have, however, drifted apart since as there is growing realisation in the two camps about their conflicting political interests, with both parties competing for the Dalit vote bank. In the recent Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the BSP spoilt the Congress’s chances on many seats and now looks set to repeat the same in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi, which will go to polls in 2008.

According to Congress leaders, the Jhansi rally will focus on the failure of the Mayawati government to bring any relief to farmers in the Bundelkhand region, which has witnessed drought and a high incidence of suicides by farmers.

Claiming that the Congress was playing the role of a constructive opposition party, AICC general secretary in charge of UP Digvijay Singh says: “There is severe drought in Bundelkhand for the last three years; villages after villages are getting deserted due to migration. But the state government has been of no help. It is not able to spend the money it has got from the Centre under the rural employment guarantee programme.”

The Congress also plans to raise the issue of compensation to farmers displaced by Taj Expressway as well as those who do not want to give up their land. The Taj Expressway is Chief Minister Mayawati’s pet project to link eastern and western UP.

The party has also sent 19 teams to 19 districts covered under the Ganga Expressway to collect reports about the problems faced by farmers. Interestingly, the Samajwadi Party has also been organising agitation of farmers against the same project.