After the Bahujan Samaj Party, it is now the Samajwadi Party is now aggressively carrying out a campaign to woo brahmin voters for the Lok Sabha elections. The party is organising a Brahmin Sammelan in Lucknow on November 10 and Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav will address the same.
According to party sources, the Samajwadi leaders will tell Brahmin voters how the party has protected their rights by strongly opposing reservation in promotion. Besides, it was the SP that declared a public holiday on Parshuram Jayanti.
“This is just one of the issues. We will tell the members of our community how the Samajwadi Party has given respect and dignity to brahmins, unlike other parties like the BSP where brahmins have been insulted and humiliated,” says Manoj Pandey, state president of the Samajwadi Brahmin Sabha.
The SP has already held brahmin conclaves in Mahoba, Farrukhabad, Barabanki, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh and Kanpur where the brahmin population is sizeable.
Party strategists feel that since brahmins play a crucial role in opinion making, especially in the rural interiors, bringing them into the party fold will help the party gain ground in the Lok Sabha polls.
“Thakurs are already with us and if we can win over brahmins, there is no stopping the Samajwadi Party. In any case, brahmins are disillusioned with the BSP that ill-treated its brahmin leaders and kept the goodies for those connected to one particular brahmin family. In our brahmin rallies, we are repeatedly explaining to our people how they have been fleeced by the BSP,” said a senior Brahmin SP MLA.
The SP, at present, does not have a brahmin leader to match the stature of the late Janeshwar Misra and though it has been propping up leaders like Manoj Pandey and Ashok Bajpai, it has failed to fill the vacuum created by Janeshwar Misra’s death.
The SP is now relying on youth leader and party’s national secretary Rajesh Dixit to attract the young brahmin voters.
Incidentally, the SP is apparently taking lessons from the BSP when it comes to wooing brahmins. The brahmin rallies being organised by the SP are similar to the Brahmin Bhaichara Sammelans that the BSP organises on the eve of every major election.