Mayawati banking on Dalit-Muslim formula for 2024 Lok Sabha elections
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati likely to give important positions in the party organisation to Muslim leaders
By Rajesh Kumar Singh
Lucknow, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati is working on the Dalit-Muslim formula for the 2024 Lok Sabha election after her party’s Dalit-Brahmin caste combination failed to click in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
The move comes as the support of Muslims, considered the vote bank of the rival Samajwadi Party, in the Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll buoyed the BSP.
Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Shah Alam aka Guddu Jamali got 2.66 lakh votes (29.12 % of the total votes polled in the constituency) in Azamgarh, finishing third behind Dharmendra Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and the winner Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Immediately after the Lok Sabha bypoll result, Mayawati called upon the Muslim community to support the BSP in the coming elections, saying her party has the strength to defeat the BJP.
The BSP chief is likely to give important positions to Muslim leaders in the organisation at a meeting of party leaders and office bearers to be held on Thursday.
The Muslim bhaichara (brotherhood) committee will be tasked with winning over Muslim support for the BSP. Muslim leaders will be also told to convince their community that the BSP is not the B team of the BJP as projected by the SP and the Congress.
“The campaign of the SP and the Congress damaged the BSP’s prospects in the assembly election,” Mayawati had told party leaders after the assembly election.
The BSP won just one seat in the assembly election. Its dismal performance indicated that the Dalit-Brahmin social engineering formula did not work at the hustings.
The BSP had organised Prabuddha sammelans across the state to win the Brahmin support, but could win merely one seat. After the assembly election, senior BSP leader Nakul Dubey was shown the door and other Brahmin leaders were also sidelined, said a party leader.
Support to the BSP from smaller parties with influence among the Muslims during the Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll has given a momentum to Mayawati’s plan to win the backing of the community, they said.
These smaller parties include All India Majlis-e- Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) led by Asaduddin Owaisi, Peace Party led by Mohammad Ayub and Rashtriya Ulama Council (RUC) led by Maulana Aamir Rashadi
The BSP did not field a candidate for the Rampur Lok Sabha seat as a gesture to Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan whose supporters had criticised the SP leadership for ignoring Khan while he was lodged in jail, the BSP leader said.
The BSP leader said the party was also working to win the support of the extremely backward community (EBC) that was considered its support base before the BJP made inroads in this caste bloc to win the 2017 and 2022 assembly elections as well as the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Courtesy : HT
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