Lucknow: Political parties in Uttar Pradesh (UP) are scrambling to woo the Scheduled Castes (SC) or Dalits — a key vote-bank that reportedly constitutes 21 per cent of the state’s population — with a declining Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) seemingly leaving a void.
The death anniversary of BSP founder Kanshi Ram on 9 October became another occasion for these parties — mainly Samajwadi Party (SP), BJP and Congress — to launch campaigns to reach out to the Dalits, prompting BSP chief Mayawati to take a jibe at political rivals, calling them “new well-wishers” of Kanshi Ram.
UP Congress chief Ajay Rai offered floral tributes to the BSP founder Monday and launched ‘Dalit Gaurav Samvad’, or dialogue, on Dalit pride in Lucknow — an ambitious campaign to hold 4,000 night chaupals (small meetings) in the state’s 80 Lok Sabha constituencies.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, after putting a garland on a portrait of Kanshi Ram Monday at the party headquarters in Lucknow said that the leader had taken the “transformational step of arousing self-confidence and political consciousness among Dalits”.
The party’s wing ‘Samajwadi Ambedkar Vahini’, constituted in June this year as part of efforts to reach out to the Dalit community, is also leading an outreach campaign.
UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state BJP president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary also paid tributes to the BSP stalwart.
On 26 September, the BJP had started a week-long ‘Dalit Sampark aur Samvad Abhiyan’ to reach out to the Dalits in SC-dominated villages.
“The party also plans to hold SC/ST mahasammelans, starting from west UP’s Hapur on 17 October and ending on 2 November in Lucknow’s Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan, where it expects five lakh people to gather,” a BJP functionary told ThePrint.
The Aazad Samaj Party (ASP), founded by Chandrashekhar Azad, which has launched a ‘Samvidhan Bachao Yatra’ across UP, held a rally in Bijnor Monday as part of several events planned across the state ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
These campaigns by political parties, in what’s being seen as an attempt to appropriate Kanshi Ram’s political legacy, come at a time when the BSP is witnessing an erosion in its support base.
Having secured 22 percent vote-share and 19 seats in the 2017 UP election, the party was reduced to a single seat in the assembly with its vote-share down to around 13 per cent in the 2022 state election.
Mirza Asmer Beg, professor of political science at Aligarh Muslim University, said a competition is going on among parties to appropriate the legacy of many icons, including Dalit icons like Babasaheb Ambedkar.
“By appropriating the legacy of icons, it becomes easier to reach out to the community as the latter identifies with them. With the weakening of the BSP, all political parties are finding an opportunity to carve out a slice from the Dalit vote-share and the caste census demand, too, is linked to that,” he said.
“The target is to get support from the marginalised sections of Dalits and Other Backward Castes (OBCs). Even if they (the parties) are able to get a small vote-share, it adds to their own and helps gain seats,” he added.
Shashi Kant Pandey, head of department of political science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, said the performance of the BSP in the 2022 election seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for the party.
“If one party which has been in power four times (in UP) comes down to one seat, it reflects the downfall of the party. And this is happening not only within UP but in other states too,” he added.
“The BSP’s decimation is due to Mayawati’s style of politics. While other parties have changed their ways to reach out to voters, Mayawati has deviated from the Kanshi Ram style of work. He would take Dalits and backwards together, but today, no old leader is left in the party and a void has been created. Obviously, other parties will try to capitalise on that,” he explained.
According to Pandey, while earlier BSP would get the Dalit vote enbloc, the situation has changed now and the BJP has made deep inroads among the non-Jatav voters, and the Valmikis and Pasis among the Dalits.
“The BJP and SP got votes from even Jatavs (a Dalit caste to which Mayawati belongs) in the 2022 election. The SP has formed an organisation called the Ambedkar Vahini and is already in alliance with Chandrashekhar’s ASP in west UP. This is a good effort as the Dalit vote comprises around 20 per cent in UP. With Mayawati’s vote-share dwindling, the Congress, SP and BJP are working hard to make inroads,” said Pandey. “With elections around the corner, they are reaching out to Dalits and remembering Dalit icons like Kanshi Ram.”
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‘Voters are now embracing SP’
The SP has been wooing the Dalit community since long before the 2022 UP election, and is set to begin booth-level meetings across the state under the banner of ‘Samvidhan Bachao Jan Chaupal’. It also plans to expand its organisational base among the community.
Speaking to ThePrint, Mithai Lal Bharti, SP’s Ambedkar Vahini’s national president, said the party was planning to reach out to the Dalits and backwards in every polling booth within the next three months.
“Chaupals will be held in every polling booth and we will soon appoint our representatives in each booth to communicate with the community and inform them that SP is the only party that can remove the BJP from the state and give it competition,” he said.
“In Ghosi assembly bypoll, voters were asked to press NOTA (by BSP). (But) the voters showed that the right to vote was given by Babasaheb Ambedkar and handed a huge win to the SP. They are now embracing the SP,” he asserted.
Bharti added that the community would be informed that the ruling BJP wants to finish reservation and change the Constitution. They would be asked to raise the demand for a caste census in UP so that the status of the Dalits and backwards in the legislature, bureaucracy and judiciary can be ascertained.
‘BSP did not do what it should have done for Dalits’
Launching the Dalit Gaurav Samvad, Congress’ Rai remarked that Kanshi Ram was being forgotten because of the BSP and the party “did not do what it should have done for the Dalits”.
Speaking to ThePrint, Anil Yadav, organisation secretary of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, told ThePrint that the dialogue campaign, which will effectively start Wednesday, will continue till Constitution Day on November 26, when the party plans to hold a big convention or rally in Lucknow.
“Many small programmes and meetings will be held with Dalit intellectuals and influencers which will include gram pradhans, block development council members, zila panchayat members, doctors, engineers, lawyers, contractors and social activists, along with influential persons from the Dalit community,” he said, adding that they will be asked to fill forms titled ‘Dalit Adhikar Maang Patras’.
“We will get 500 forms filled by Dalit intellectuals in each assembly seat, and in the process reach out to two lakh intellectuals across the state. The patras will include the major demands of Dalits,” Yadav explained.
A core-group of 10 community members will be formed in every assembly constituency and, in such a way, the group at the Lok Sabha level will have a total of around 50 members with whom the Dalit agenda will be discussed, according to Yadav.
He further said that Kanshi Ram was a leader of the Dalits and no party had a monopoly over him.
“Kanshi Ramji was a man who had a grip on the ground. There was no constituency in UP which he had not visited. People looked at him with respect. But today, his slogan of ‘jiski jitni sankhya bhari uski utni bhagidaari’ (representation proportional to population) remains incomplete. Congress leaders are giving the same slogan today,” he added.
The ASP, which has launched a ‘Samvidhan Bachao Yatra’, is planning to hold more rallies and public meetings in UP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
Speaking to ThePrint, Sunil Kumar Chittod, state president of the party, said a big rally had been held in west UP’s Bijnor Monday and two more were planned — one in Kanpur Dehat on 22 October and another in Phulpur on 29 October.
“We will reach out to the public in big cities as well as small ones. The yatra will continue till election notification (for 2024) is issued,” he said.
Mayawati hits back
Mayawati termed the Congress and BJP as the “new well-wishers” of Kanshi Ram.
After offering flowers to a portrait of the leader in Lucknow, Mayawati said that while the “casteist and anti-reservation parties, especially the BJP and Congress, are racing to portray themselves as the new well-wishers for the sake of votes ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, (Kanshi Ram’s) struggle for the welfare and constitutional rights of OBCs and religious minorities, along with that of Dalits/adivasis, has been exemplary”.
She also recounted how “the BJP and Congress had opposed Kanshi Ram’s move to extend support to the V.P. Singh government” which implemented OBC reservation, and how “those expressing grief on the occasion (Kanshi Ram’s death anniversary) had not even declared a mourning period in Punjab and UP after his demise (in 2006)”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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