The Bahujan Samaj Party is paying extra attention on the 17 reserved seats for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in order to ensure that it wins maximum seats in this category.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the BSP had won only two, Lalganj and Misrikh, seats in the reserved category while the Samajwadi Party had won 10 reserved seats.
In the 2012 Assembly elections, too, the BSP had lost 70 of the 85 reserved seats while the SP had succeeded in winning 56 reserved seats.
The results of both these elections indicated the growing disenchantment of Dalits towards the BSP and having realised this now, the BSP leadership is making an all-out effort to win back its traditional vote base.
The BSP, this time, is concentrating on dalit groups other than Jatavs and has fielded six Pasi candidates in central and eastern UP on the reserved seats. The party will be fielding candidates belonging to Chamar-Jatav community on 10 seats, most of them being in western UP. “Ms Mayawati is keen to ensure that other dalit sub-castes do not feel unwanted in the party and hence, she has decided to field candidates belonging to Pasi, Dhanuk, Valmiki and other sub-castes,” said a party functionary.
Since Pasis form about 16 per cent of the dalit population in UP, Ms Mayawati is leaving no stone unturned to win back the community.
She even brought back R.K. Choudhury, a prominent Pasi leader, into the BSP after expelling him 12 years ago. Mr R.K. Choudhury will be the BSP candidate from Mohanlalganj and has been assigned the task of bringing Pasi voters closer to the BSP in other constituencies as well. Ms Mayawati has also asked leaders belonging to Muslim, upper caste and OBC groups in the BSP to work on their caste groups in the reserved constituencies.
“If other castes support the dalit candidates in reserved constituency, there is no stopping the BSP from reaching the winning post. Our strategy for the reserved seats is to work simultaneously on the dalit voters who form the chunk in these constituencies and also on non-dalit voters,” the party leader explained.
Ms Mayawati has asked Brahmin leader Satish Chandra Misra, Muslim leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui and OBC leader Swami Prasad Maurya to hold “Bhaichara Sammelan” of their communities in the reserved constituencies to enlist the support of their respective communities for the BSP candidates.
The BSP game plan is to aggressively woo dalits as well as upper castes, OBCs and Muslims since the support of a minimum of any two of these caste groups can lead the BSP to victory in the general elections.