NEW DELHI, May 1:
The remaining two rounds of election in the Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh are very crucial for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Dalit icon Mayawati, as out of the 33 seats involved in the 7th and 12th round, the party had won 10 and come second on 22 others in the last elections With reports of her Dalit vote bank developing cracks due to the Modi factor, and her arch rival Mulayam Singh Yadav reminding Muslims of her frequent hand shakes with the BJP in the past, Ms Mayawati is leaving no stone unturned to assure the community of her resolve not to go with the saffron party in any circumstances.
The BSP had surprised the whole country by its performance in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections when it won 21 of the 80 seats in the
state, coming second only to the ruling Samajwadi party in the state. However, this time the party is working against a number of odds to keep up its tally.
The first thing that is uncomfortable for the BSP is that it is out of power in the state this time and second is that Dalit and other backward class voters are this time not going by pure caste considerations alone.
The younger lot is ready to give change a chance, so there being no Modi wave as such, as claimed by Ms Mayawati and Mr yadav both, it cannot be denied that Modi is a factor in this elections.
In the final stages of the election, the BSP supremo is taking special care to hold its minority votes, stressing to them that neither the SP nor the Congress would be able to “stop Modi”, and they would be wasting their vote by going for these parties. In view of the feared drift of her Dalit votes, the BSP has this time tried to compensate for the loss by giving tickets to 19 Muslims and 21 Brahmins.
As part of this strategy, she has been questioning the backward credentials of Mr Modi, and playing up what she calls the “anti-dalit” mindset of the BJP. She has been telling Dalits that the BJP would try to strike at the root of reservations for them if it came to power. To wean away Muslims from the SP, the BSP supremo has been alleging collusion of the both the SP and the BJP in the communal flare-up in Western UP.
Ms Mayawati, has also expressed the fear that elections in the state might not be fair and free with the SP being in power. In the last elections, she had the advantage of being in power in the state, but this time she has expressed apprehension of misuse of official machinery by the ruling SP, and urged the Election Commission to send more forces to the state. If Ms Mayawati improves her tally or even retains her seats, she might play an important role in the formation of a government at the Centre in case elections throw up a hung Parliament. The seats that her party had won in the 2009 elections are Phulpur, Ambedkar Nagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Bhadohi, Deoria, Lalganj, Ghosi, Salempur and Jaunpur. The seats on which the party candidates had come second are Amethi, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Kausambi, Allahabad, Bahraiach, Kaiserganj, Shravasti, Gonda, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Bansgaon, Azamgarh, Baalia, Jaunpur, Machchlishahr, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Robertsganj . (UNI)
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