The Samajwadi Party is working on a plot to make deep inroads into the dalit vote base of BSP supremo Mayawati to script her defeat in 2012 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. The SP think tank is of the opinion that if the dalits vote against the BSP, as they did in last year’s General Elections, Ms Mayawati would have least chance of forming the government again in the state.
The SP had won 11 out of the 18 reserved Lok Sabha seats in UP for Scheduled Castes, while Congress, BJP and BSP had won two each, with one going to the RLD. The SP think tank, which is fine tuning the party strategy for 2012 state polls, is working overtime to further build base among the dalit constituency and not allow Ms Mayawati to recover from the poll debacle last year.
“Dalits constituted the core of the social engineering scripted by the BSP in the 2007 state elections. The last year’s General Elections proved that the SP has made deep inroads among dalits. With brahmins already drifting away from the BSP, Ms Mayawati’s social engineering will come a cropper in the 2012 polls if she fails to get the support of her traditional voters,” stated a senior SP leader.
The UP state SP chief Akhilesh Yadav also echoed line and told this newspaper that the dalits have rejected the BSP and they would vote the same way again in 2012 as well. “Dalits have been cheated by Ms Mayawati. They are very angry against her. The SP got support from the dalits in the Lok Sabha elections. The party will not only target the dalits but others also for the 2012 elections in an attempt to unseat Ms Mayawati from the power,” Mr Yadav stated.
Though the UP elections is still about two years away, dalits have caught the fancy of principal political parties in the state. It is not only the SP, which is reaching out to the dalits, even the Congress led by the party general secretary Rahul Gandhi is making all attempts to do the same. The two parties are of the opinion that if the BSP manages support of the Dalits in full, the Mayawati led party will get more than 100 Assembly seats and there could be a possibility of a hung Assembly also.