As part of the “social outreach” programme of the Youth Congress, party general secretary Rahul Gandhi appears to have taken a leaf out of the social engineering of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to reach out to sections within dalits who have apparently not benefited during the regime of the incumbent Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati.
Mr Kumar had carved out the Mahadalit segment which had apparently given a body blow to the Lok Janshakti Party headed by Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar in the recent elections in the state.
“We are very much reaching out to a number of castes within the dalit group to build our base. A number of social activists have been working with us. We have statistics to tell the people that only a particular caste in UP has got benefits, which include representation in the state council of ministers and also in government recruitments,” said a senior Youth Congress functionary.
In a clear bid to dent the bastion of BSP supremo Mayawati, the Congress is hopeful that it would make inroads in the 22 per cent dalit vote base in UP in the February Assembly elections.
“The Youth Congress has been organising camps and reaching out to the people to gather facts how the marginalised sections within the dalits have been deprived of the benefits of the Centrally-sponsored flagship schemes. Though we are not working on to build group like Mahadalit, we are hopeful of the fact that a number of dalit castes would vote for the Congress,” added the functionary.