Maya’s jumbo remains in limbo

Deepkamal Kaur & Amaninder Pal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 10

The Scheduled Castes account for about one-third (31.9 per cent) of Punjab’s population. This figure is the highest among all states, yet the Dalit-centric Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has never reached the double-digit mark in the Assembly. What heightens the irony is the fact that the party was founded by a Punjabi, Dalit icon Kanshi Ram, back in 1984.

In contrast, the BSP has repeatedly managed to form the government in Uttar Pradesh, where only 20.7 per cent of the population belongs to the SC community. The party was first voted to power in UP 21 years ago. Its supremo, Kanshi Ram’s successor Mayawati, has served as the Chief Minister four times.

In Punjab, the party’s highest tally (nine MLAs) was in the boycott-hit 1992 Assembly elections, when militancy was at its peak. The BSP’s vote share dropped from 16 per cent in 1992 to just 1.9 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Dr Ashutosh Kumar, a Professor of Political Science at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and a fellow at the Centre for Social and Development Studies, gives the reasons for the BSP no-show. “Punjab’s Assembly is not a mirror image of its society. Dalits are nowhere in the power equation. In UP, the Dalit assertion was massive due to the large-scale oppression. Such oppression was missing in the border state. Here, Dalits have never voted en bloc,” says Dr Kumar.

He observes that the Dalit leadership in Punjab comes from the Ad-Dharmi (Ravidassia) community, whereas a major chunk of the SC vote bank consists of Valmikis. “Moreover, Mayawati has never paid serious attention to this state,” he adds.

The party has drawn a blank in the past three Assembly elections. As many as 109 of the 117 candidates it fielded in the 2012 polls forfeited their security deposit. However, some of them played spoilsport for the Congress in Doaba, due to which the party was infamously labelled as “Sukhbir Badal’s B-team”.

The party, which had nine MLAs in 1992 and three MPs (Phillaur, Hoshiarpur and Ferozepur) in 1996, impacted the poll results on at least 15 of the 23 seats in Doaba, besides a few in Malwa, including Chamkaur Sahib, Ludhiana North, Ludhiana East and Fazilka. No wonder Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal tried to woo Kanshi Ram’s sister on March 15 last year. That day, during a separate rally at Nawanshahr to mark Kanshi Ram’s birth anniversary, Mayawati had announced that the BSP would not have any tie-up in the state. This was the trigger that made many disillusioned leaders quit the party.

There are several leaders of rival parties who used the BSP as their launch pad: Akali MLAs Pawan Kumar Tinu (Adampur), Avinash Chander (Phillaur), Des Raj Dhugga (Sri Hargobindpur) and Congress legislator Hardyal Kamboj (Rajpura). Akali Dal’s new faces Baldev Khera (Phillaur), Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi (Banga), Congress nominee Satnam Kainth (Banga), AAP candidate from Adampur Hans Raj Rana and Lok Insaaf Party nominee from Phagwara Jarnail Nangal, too, are former BSP leaders.

AAP has inducted two of the party’s former presidents — Parkash Singh Jandali and Mohan Singh Phallianwala. The Congress recently poached BSP leaders Sammitar Singh Sikri, Arjan Singh and Ram Kishan Gujjar. In another setback to the party, state affairs incharge Narendra Kashyap was replaced last year after his name figured in a dowry death case in Uttar Pradesh.

Among the party’s prominent candidates this time is former state unit chief Avtar Singh Karimpuri, who has been fielded from Phillaur. It was from this seat that the BSP had got the highest number of votes (over 42,000) in the 2012 polls. In an attempt to woo the SC vote bank, Kejriwal had chosen Phillaur as the venue to release AAP’s Dalit manifesto last year and even promised to appoint a Dalit Deputy CM in Punjab.