Since 1991, the Congress party has unsuccessfully tested various revival strategies in UP; an erstwhile bastion where it was pushed to the fringe by an ever ascendant politics of mandal and kamandal. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Rahul Gandhi succeeded partially when the Congress managed to wrest 21 of the state’s 80 seats – its best tally since 1991. The gains, however, were lost quickly. In the 2012 assembly polls, Rahul’s aggressive campaign, Digvijaya Singh’s wily maneuvers and even election strategist Prashant Kishor’s expertise failed to wrest the Congress’s downslide. Rahul’s second attempt by piggy-riding on Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav in the 2017 assembly polls with a SP-Congress alliance too came a cropper.