The president of the two-year-old party worked hard to mobilise his community in Gorakhpur and the rest of eastern UP.
New Delhi: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav may be basking in the glory of defeating the BJP in two Lok Sabha bypolls in Uttar Pradesh this week but even he knows that the stunning upset in Gorakhpur wouldn’t have been possible without Dr Sanjay Nishad, president of the two-year-old Nishad Party.
“The Gorakhpur constituency has four lakh Nishad (OBC) voters and all of them voted for the Samajwadi Party on our appeal,” Sanjay Nishad, the father of newly elected MP Praveen Nishad, told ThePrint.
Sanjay Nishad launched his party in 2016 and since then he has been mobilising his cadres for a decisive fight against Yogi Adityanath, who had been the sitting MP of Gorakhpur until he vacated the seat after taking charge as UP chief minister last year.
Quick results
The Nishad Party worked towards educating and increasing awareness of among the youths of the community through training programmes.
“We ran programmes to raise social and political awareness among people,” Sanjay Nishad said.
“There are many educated people who don’t’ know anything about government policies, budget, among other things. We simply made them more aware of what is happening in the country,” he added.
As a leader of the party, he himself would go to villages and address the crowd.
“When India got Independence, the dollar was equal to Indian rupees. Today it is seventy times higher,” he was quoted to have said in his speech.
His tirade against the Modi government’s economic policies came through his speeches. “Jitni baar kamal ka button dabaoge, paanch guna gareeb ho jaoge” (You will get five-times as poor whenever you push the lotus button).
Once a BSP vote bank
The Nishads had earlier voted for the BSP which fielded Jamuna Nishad, a popular leader from the community.
Jamuna became a minister in the Mayawati government in 2007. But in 2008, he was removed from the cabinet over his alleged role in a mob attack on a police station in which a constable died.
Sanjay Nishad alleges that an upper caste boy, who held for raping a Nishad girl, was freed by the police. The mob protest was to demand justice for the Nishad girl, leading to the violence.
Jamuna Nishad was later arrested and sent to jail. In 2010, he died in a road accident.
“He didn’t die; he was killed,” Sanjay Nishad claimed. Since then Nishads turned against the BSP.
In 2012, their votes got divided among several parties. However, in 2014, the community voted for Yogi Adityanath, primarily for two reasons.
Baba Matsyendranath, who was the guru of Gorakhnath, is worshipped by the Nishads as they consider themselves as his descendants, said Sanjay Nishad.
“Another factor is that Yogi ji promised to change the living conditions of Nishads,” he added.
He claims that nothing changed after Yogi became chief minister and that community continues to face atrocities.
An influential leader
Dr Sanjay Nishad used to run an homeopathy clinic in Rapti Nagar area of Gorakhpur.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Nishad was associated with Kanshi Ram who was the leader of Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF).
“I used to mobilise cadre for BAMCEF meetings and was a volunteer based in Gorakhpur,” he said.
In 1984, when Kanshi Ram and Mayawati formed BSP, Nishad stayed back in BAMCEF at the instance of Kanshi Ram.
In the following years, Kanshi Ram got unwell and Nishad was left to do his own politics.
Together with his friend R.P. Pandya, he started Shakti Mukti Maha Sangh in 2003 with a slogan of ‘Jai Jyoti, Jai Bheem’ — Jyoti stood for Jyotiba Phule and Bheem for Ambedkar.
In 2008, he formed All India Backward and Minority Forum.
Sanjay Nishad first came to limelight in June 2015, when he along with thousands of people of his community stopped trains at Sahajanwa railway station demanding SC status for all Nishads. One person was killed in police firing and later Sanjay Nishad was arrested.
He said the thought of launching a political party came to his mind when he was in jail. “It’s only the people from the Nishad community who would come to see me in jail and then I decided that I will make a party for this caste only.”
Just before the 2017 assembly elections, he had met Rahul Gandhi in Delhi and there was a talk of merger. “Yes I met him and there was a proposal but Congress didn’t follow it up.”
Nishad contested the elections with the support of the Peace Party, a party with a support base among Ansari Muslims. “The Ansari’s are also Nishads. Former rulers had created a division among us. Now, we have formed an alliance,” said Sanjay Nishad.
The Nishad Party contested in 67 assembly seats but won just one — Gyanpur.
“In total, we got 6.5 lakh votes and one seat. What else could you expect for a party which was launched a few months before the elections,” he asked.
However, when the proposal came from the Samajwadi Party this time, Sanjay Nishad was smart enough not to merge his party. Instead, he fielded his son Praveen to contest on an SP symbol.
Sanjay Nishad claims that his community accounts for 12 per cent of UP’s population.
“We have presence in almost 150 assembly constituencies. Wherever there are rivers and canals, Nishads would be there.”