Farmers Movement Archive

BSP chief back to drawing board to fortify vote-base

Lucknow: The aggressive positioning of Samajwadi Party vis-a-vis BJP in run-up to polls is learnt to have stirred BSP chief Mayawati to sit up and go back to her political drawing board. Highly placed sources in BSP said the deft Dalit politician has opened her cryptic channels to conduct a detailed profiling of assembly constituencies to select “winnable” candidates for assembly polls due early next year. The move assumes political pertinence with the former UP CM being pushed to the wall amidst SP and BJP’s concerted bid to nibble at the very foundation of her key Dalit-MBC vote-base. With a host of expelled BSP MLAs hopping on to the Opposition bandwagon, ostensibly SP, Mayawati, sources said, has decided to prop candidates who could fit into the local caste matrix and have “considerable influence” to neutralize a potential polarization of voters between SP and BJP. “We are working silently at the ground level before the party moves into a full-fledged campaign mode,” said a senior BSP leader, asserting that issues like farmers’ stir against new farm laws, unemployment and poor law and order were high on the party’s agenda. The BSP leader said, Mayawati has also asked party leaders to strengthen the party’s organizational structure to counter the well-oiled poll machinery of BJP, which is resolutely backed by cadres of its ideological mentor RSS and its Hindutva arm, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Mayawati’s stress on a robust organisational structure, party sources said, stems from the need to amalgamate cadre who can help improve the party’s vote percentage that has been on a decline since 2012 assembly elections. The development comes months after Mayawati whipped out a Brahmin card to play her tried-and-tested social engineering formula that propelled her to power with absolute majority for the first time in 2007 assembly elections. Party sources said, Mayawati keenly seeks to play ‘soft Hindutva’ to woo the upper caste, which has traditionally been voting in favour of BJP. She had set the idea rolling by asking party MP and party’s Brahmin face SC Mishra to organize ‘Prabuddh Varg Sammelans’ across the state to woo the upper caste. The move, political analysts said, may essentially help in 80 reserved seats, where BSP has not been performing well in the past. Nevertheless, experts said, stakes are high for Mayawati who faces a looming political crisis in UP where she has been out of power for nearly 10 years. Her worries have escalated even as SP and BJP brass manage to set the political narrative oscillating between themselves. The aggressive entry of Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has only added to the concerns of the BSP boss.

The Times of India

2021-11-10

Lucknow