Farmers Movement Archive

{First rally | Post-alliance} SAD-BSP step up poll drive, woo Doaba’s Dalit votebank

Phagwara The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), an ally of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab for the 2022 assembly polls in the state, on Sunday declared its state unit chief Jasvir Singh Garhi as candidate from Phagwara (reserved) seat. BSP national coordinator Akash Anand, who is also the nephew of party supremo Mayawati, announced the decision at the first joint rally of the two parties since the alliance was formalised. Phagawara is the Centre of Doaba, a region with the highest proportion of Dalit population. According to the seat-sharing arrangement between the parties, the BSP will fight on 20 of 117 assembly seats.At the ‘Alakh Jagao Rally’ (Reignite your pride), SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal announced that if voted to power, it will provide 33% reservation in government jobs to students who pass out from government schools.Sukhbir also raised issues of delay in welfare schemes, including Shagun Scheme or Blue cards, and post-matric scholarship scheme. “The Congress government in Punjab has stopped the post-matric scholarship scheme for Scheduled Caste students to deprive Dalit students of higher education,” speaker after speaker alleged at the rally.Attacking chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, Sukhbir alleged the Congress government had ruined Punjab while its ministers and MLAs of the ruling party have the sole agenda loot Punjab. “Besides looting the state, the government has failed to continue social welfare schemes launched during SAD government,” he claimed, adding, “All theses schemes will be restored and the current SC welfare minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot will be jailed.” He claimed that the SAD-BJP alliance had unnerved the Congress, the BJP and the AAP.Claiming that the SAD-BSP alliance will last for 25-40 years or more, he said the SAD snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because it “stabbed” Punjabis and farmers in their back.“We have to fulfil the dreams of Kanshi Ram, the BSP founder. All of us have to work with unity to ensure we voted in to form the next government,” Anand said at the rally.MP Ram Gautam, who is also the national coordinator of the BSP, alleged that the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government that the Congress led were scam-tainted. “The BSP is with farmers and will always support them. We have also protested shoulder-to-shoulder in their protest on for the past few months. The AAP government in Delhi was the first to implement the Centre’s three farm laws and the party is an off-shoot of the RSS.”“Four ministers of the Congress government in the state are already under the lens for committing ₹multi-crore scams,” alleged Garhi.Every speaker who addressed the rally also flayed the use of force on farmers by the Haryana Police in Karnal on Saturday. They also delayed their arrival at the rally venue, in view of the two-hour blockade called by Punjab farmers to protest the lathi-charge against Haryana farmers.

Hindustan Times

29-08-2021

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