The Bahujan Samaj Party may appear under siege, but the ability of its leader Mayawati to shock her opponents seems to remain intact. Two months ago, she surprised her opponents and supporters by deciding not to contest the by-election for 11 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh. In recent weeks, however, the BSP has become the first party to start clearing names of candidates for the state assembly poll due in 2017.
The selection of candidates, aimed at giving them ample to cultivate their constituencies, began merely weeks after the UP bypoll, which was held on September 13. The process is likely to be completed in course of the next few months, according to a senior leader of the party.
Among the names that has already been cleared is that of Tribhuvan Dutt, who has been picked to contest from Alapur in Ambedkar Nagar “My name was first cleared by our leader and then announced at a function in my constituency by party’s zonal co-ordinator Lalji Varma on September 30,” Dutt told Scroll.in over phone on Monday. In the last assembly elections in 2012, he had lost miserably to Samajwadi Party’s Bhim Prasad Sonkar.
Starting from Ambedkar Nagar
Dutt said that the BSP has cleared the names of candidates for all the five assembly seats in Ambedkar Nagar. He has already started constituting booth-level panels and "bhaichara committees" consisting of people from various castes in his constituency.
In the other assembly seats, in Ambedkar Nagar, the BSP’s zonal coordinator Lalji Varma will contest from Katehri, Sanjay Rajbhar from Akbarpur, Ritesh Pandey from Jalalpur and Vishal Varma from Tanda. Like Dutt, othese men also lost to the Samajwadi Party in the last assembly elections.
While the names of all five candidates have been cleared in last few weeks, only Tribhuvan Dutt’s candidature was required to be announced publicly because, after his massive defeat in the last elections, he was thought to have and for some time after the Aseembly election he seemed to have lost the favour of the party leade, said Vishal Varma, who has been chosen as party’s candidate from Tanda constituency.
“ The rest of us were simply informed about Behenji’s decision and asked to start preparation in our respective constituencies for 2017 poll,” he added.
The fact that Mayawati has started the exercise from Ambedkar Nagar shows that she first wants to put her Dalit bastion in order. This district has always been regarded as the workshop of Ambedkarite politics in the Uttar Pradesh. Dalits constitute nearly 28% of the district’s population, and almost 90% of them are Jatavs, the Scheduled Caste that has remained the moving force of Dalit politics in the state. Mayawati herself belongs to the Jatav caste, as was Kanshi Ram, the founder of the BSP.
Ground zero
It was in this district – called Akbarpur till 1995 – that Dalit leader Ramji Ram had broken new ground by winning a parliamentary election back in 1967, much before the BSP was formed, contesting on the ticket of Dr. BR Ambedkar’s Republican Party of India. This district served as Mayawati’s launching pad, electing her to the Lok Sabha three times.
Until the last assembly election, the BSP remained a powerful force in the district. In 2007 state polls, it had won all five seats here with huge margins and three MLAs from Ambedkar Nagar were heavyweight ministers in the Mayawati government. In 2012 polls, however, Mayawati lost all the seats in here – a rout that was repeated in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year.
Whether Mayawati’s decision to clear the names of candidates two and a half years before the elections will pay any dividend remains to be seen. For quite some time, none of her political moves appear to have worked. The BSP did not win a single seat in the Lok Sabha elections and her Dalit core did not follow her diktat in the September bypolls to swing in vote for the specific independent candidates the party had identified in different constituencies.
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The selection of candidates, aimed at giving them ample to cultivate their constituencies, began merely weeks after the UP bypoll, which was held on September 13. The process is likely to be completed in course of the next few months, according to a senior leader of the party.
Among the names that has already been cleared is that of Tribhuvan Dutt, who has been picked to contest from Alapur in Ambedkar Nagar “My name was first cleared by our leader and then announced at a function in my constituency by party’s zonal co-ordinator Lalji Varma on September 30,” Dutt told Scroll.in over phone on Monday. In the last assembly elections in 2012, he had lost miserably to Samajwadi Party’s Bhim Prasad Sonkar.
Starting from Ambedkar Nagar
Dutt said that the BSP has cleared the names of candidates for all the five assembly seats in Ambedkar Nagar. He has already started constituting booth-level panels and "bhaichara committees" consisting of people from various castes in his constituency.
In the other assembly seats, in Ambedkar Nagar, the BSP’s zonal coordinator Lalji Varma will contest from Katehri, Sanjay Rajbhar from Akbarpur, Ritesh Pandey from Jalalpur and Vishal Varma from Tanda. Like Dutt, othese men also lost to the Samajwadi Party in the last assembly elections.
While the names of all five candidates have been cleared in last few weeks, only Tribhuvan Dutt’s candidature was required to be announced publicly because, after his massive defeat in the last elections, he was thought to have and for some time after the Aseembly election he seemed to have lost the favour of the party leade, said Vishal Varma, who has been chosen as party’s candidate from Tanda constituency.
“ The rest of us were simply informed about Behenji’s decision and asked to start preparation in our respective constituencies for 2017 poll,” he added.
The fact that Mayawati has started the exercise from Ambedkar Nagar shows that she first wants to put her Dalit bastion in order. This district has always been regarded as the workshop of Ambedkarite politics in the Uttar Pradesh. Dalits constitute nearly 28% of the district’s population, and almost 90% of them are Jatavs, the Scheduled Caste that has remained the moving force of Dalit politics in the state. Mayawati herself belongs to the Jatav caste, as was Kanshi Ram, the founder of the BSP.
Ground zero
It was in this district – called Akbarpur till 1995 – that Dalit leader Ramji Ram had broken new ground by winning a parliamentary election back in 1967, much before the BSP was formed, contesting on the ticket of Dr. BR Ambedkar’s Republican Party of India. This district served as Mayawati’s launching pad, electing her to the Lok Sabha three times.
Until the last assembly election, the BSP remained a powerful force in the district. In 2007 state polls, it had won all five seats here with huge margins and three MLAs from Ambedkar Nagar were heavyweight ministers in the Mayawati government. In 2012 polls, however, Mayawati lost all the seats in here – a rout that was repeated in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year.
Whether Mayawati’s decision to clear the names of candidates two and a half years before the elections will pay any dividend remains to be seen. For quite some time, none of her political moves appear to have worked. The BSP did not win a single seat in the Lok Sabha elections and her Dalit core did not follow her diktat in the September bypolls to swing in vote for the specific independent candidates the party had identified in different constituencies.