To woo Dalits, BJP forms teams for all 75 UP dists

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 30

Given her dedicated hard-to-break Dalit vote bank, poaching her key men may not exactly reap great vote benefits for the saffron party in the high-stake Uttar Pradesh. However, the BJP appears to have succeeded in what it may have planned for — push BSP chief Mayawati to forego her much-celebrated social engineering formula and concentrate on Muslims and Dalits, leaving the upper castes for the saffron party.

While she fielded 139 upper caste candidates in 2007 (when she won 206 seats) and 117 in 2012 polls, changing tack this time she seems to be favouring Muslims and Dalits. Which is why after poaching her top leaders, the BJP leadership appears to be attempting another formula to woo her dedicated vote bank (Dalits), though as per political analyst Sudhir Panwar it may be a difficult task given the community’s almost-unwavering affiliation towards her.

BJP sources say the party has decided to form individual task forces for each of the 75 districts in UP. The task force will be manned by the block pramukh and prominent Dalit leaders of the area. Some key regions may also include MPs, they say.

The aim of this “RSS-backed” effort is to make people aware of the BJP-led Centre’s “pro-poor and pro-backward classes” programmes and policies and convert them into tangible vote backs. Some national-level Dalit leaders will also be pushed into the job, it seems.

As per Panwar, Mayawati seems to be reacting on the lines the BJP in these elections. “The 2014 LS results appear to have forced her back on her tried-and-tested strategy — Dalits. Alongside, by wooing Muslims, she is attempting to change the BSP’s uncertainty into certainty.