UP chief minister Mayawati’s elephant now has a new opponent in the electoral arena — a road roller that will be driven by Dalbara Singh, brother of late Kanshi Ram.
Mr Singh has floated a new party called Bahujan Sangharsh Party that has the same acronym, BSP, as Ms Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party.
“Our party has been registered and we have been allotted the road roller as our party symbol by the Election Commission. We will now contest every Assembly seat in the coming Assembly elections and tell the people that we are the real BSP. Mayawati has strayed from late Kanshi Ram’s ideology and had he been alive, he would have been deeply distressed to see the manner in which she is being guided by Brahmins,” said Mr Singh while talking to this correspondent on phone.
Mr Singh will be assisted by his daughter, Sukhjinder Singh, in his party’s electoral debut in UP.
Explaining the need for floating a new party, Mr Singh said that late Kanshi Ram never promoted his family in politics because he wanted to work for the upliftment of the poorest of the poor.
“He devoted his entire life to his mission and we never interfered. However, after his death, we cannot remain silent and see his entire mission being frittered away by Mayawati. Dalits are now being betrayed by Bahujan Samaj Party and upper castes and mafia and moneybags are taking over the party. We want to carry forward the mission of Kanshi Ram and hence the need for another party,” he says.
To defeat the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mr Singh is not averse to a coalition with other parties.
“It is still too early for any such talks because we are presently trying to build up the party organization in every district and get proper candidates for every seat. However, we are not against an alliance with like-minded parties because our mission is to trample the elephant with our road roller,” he said.
A senior Bahujan Samaj Party minister, however, dismissed Mr Singh’s initiative as a non-starter. “Kanshi Ram had named Mayawati as his political successor when he was still active in politics. The world knows that she is carrying forward his political legacy. The claims being made by Dalbara Singh are worthless and the Bahujan Samaj is intelligent enough to differentiate the wheat from the chaff,” he said.