Without an anchor

Deepkamal Kaur in Jalandhar

Loss of cadre and downfall of the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab has left a huge vacuum, waiting to be filled by the Bahujan Samaj Party. The BSP, however, has made no efforts to make a comeback.

Several issues related to Dalits, including the dilution of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, hit the headlines recently, but the BSP has shown no signs of recovery since its poor show of getting a mere 1.5 per cent vote share in 2017 Punjab Assembly elections.  

To form an alliance with Shiromani Akali Dal, the BSP has a condition, “We are ready to support the Akali Dal, provided it parts ways with the BJP,” says the party’s Punjab president Rachhpal Raju.

Raju is also not hopeful of forming an alliance with the Congress either. He, however, says, “We will go entirely by the hukum of Behenji. At our end, strategising for the LS polls has already started. We will soon appoint three incharges for each of the general seat and two for the reserved seats. Also, we are also trying to woo back our supporters, who had moved to AAP”.

Meanwhile, the party cadres are happy about the alliance option. “We have seen a steep fall in vote share — from 16.32 per cent in 1992 to 5.75 per cent in 2009 to 1.9 per cent in 2014. It plummeted down to 1.4 per cent in last year Vidhan Sabha polls. Alone, we stand nowhere”, says a senior party leader requesting anonymity.

The party workers, who have contested on a BSP ticket in the past, are upset over the missing state leadership. “We have lost some very capable leaders. Pawan Tinu, Baldev Khaira, Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi and Avinash Chander were some of the capable leaders, but it is only when they joined other parties that they became MLAs. Our ex-president Parkash Jandali joined the AAP. Even our ex-national secretary and Punjab incharge Narendra Kashyap joined the BJP,” says a former LS candidate of the party.