06-12-2009, 01:10 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Will Maya dump Sarvajan, go back to Bahujan?</b>
pioneer.com
Akhilesh Suman | New Delhi
The Brahmins have ditched us and the Muslims shifted their loyalty to the Congress,â a senior Bahujan Samaj Party leader glumly told The Pioneer, once the Lok Sabha results were out for Uttar Pradesh.
There are many in the BSP who hold this opinion. Several party leaders have begun to wonder whether the BSP should continue with its so-called social engineering model that had worked for the party only two years ago, but appears to have now gone awry in the Lok Sabha election. Even party chief Mayawati is reportedly taking a close and hard look at the issue.
The Pioneer spoke to a number of BSP leaders during the last Parliament session and got a distinct feeling that they were unsure about the political alignment lasting for long. Although none wished to come on record, almost everyone said the combination threatened to fall apart, and if that happened, the BSP had no option but to aggressively return to its basics - consolidate the Dalit vote bank.
Party sources told The Pioneer that, while Mayawati is unlikely to immediately debunk the alignment she so carefully built, the party supremo would take a final call once the Assembly and parliamentary by-elections in UP were over in September.
âNow we have to look towards Dalits and Extremely
Backward castes for social equations that will yield results,ââ a senior party leader said, adding that only good governance could check mass desertion of upper caste voters.
Sources said that Mayawati had already begun to re-emphasise the Dalit factor and only rarely used the Sarvajan hitay phrase coined by her to woo the upper castes. âNow, we are sitting on a double-edged sword; we have to keep the social equation alive, but how far it will work is difficult to predict,â they said.
After the stunning setback, Mayawati directed her party functionaries to hold district wise review meeting to understand the reasons of humiliating defeat during the recently held parliamentary poll. Among other things, the proposed review meetings would examine efficacy of her âinvincible social engineeringâ that had taken Brahmins and Dalits on a single platform during the last Assembly poll.
<b>Her partyâs vote share has gone down from 30.4 per cent in the 2007 Assembly election to 27 per cent in 2009 Lok Sabha election. Translating this into Assembly segments, the mark has come down to 100 from 206 in two years</b>.
<b>The defeat was all the more shocking since, for the total 80 seats in the State, 20 tickets were given to Brahmin candidates, while six tickets went to Thakur candidates. Muslim candidates were fielded in 14 constituencies and the Schedule Castes got a share of 22 seats. It is clear that even the fielding of upper caste candidates did little to gain the support of the non-Dalit voters.
In the end, the Congress - that had won only 22 Assembly seats in 2007 with just 8.6 per cent vote share - took the lead on as many as 95 Assembly segments with a vote share of 18 per cent, bagging 21 Lok Sabha seats. In fact, all the three parties: The BJP, Congress and SP fared better than the ruling BSP in the State in the parliamentary poll. </b>
Party leaders feel that, although they came to power in UP on the promise of bringing together a broad spectrum of society cutting across caste equations, the party failed in fighting criminalisation in politics and promoting effective governance.
The partyâs Brahmin mascot and party general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra - said to be the second-most important person in the State after Mayawati, is likely to feel the heat, although insiders rule out any souring of relations between his leader and him for the moment.
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pioneer.com
Akhilesh Suman | New Delhi
The Brahmins have ditched us and the Muslims shifted their loyalty to the Congress,â a senior Bahujan Samaj Party leader glumly told The Pioneer, once the Lok Sabha results were out for Uttar Pradesh.
There are many in the BSP who hold this opinion. Several party leaders have begun to wonder whether the BSP should continue with its so-called social engineering model that had worked for the party only two years ago, but appears to have now gone awry in the Lok Sabha election. Even party chief Mayawati is reportedly taking a close and hard look at the issue.
The Pioneer spoke to a number of BSP leaders during the last Parliament session and got a distinct feeling that they were unsure about the political alignment lasting for long. Although none wished to come on record, almost everyone said the combination threatened to fall apart, and if that happened, the BSP had no option but to aggressively return to its basics - consolidate the Dalit vote bank.
Party sources told The Pioneer that, while Mayawati is unlikely to immediately debunk the alignment she so carefully built, the party supremo would take a final call once the Assembly and parliamentary by-elections in UP were over in September.
âNow we have to look towards Dalits and Extremely
Backward castes for social equations that will yield results,ââ a senior party leader said, adding that only good governance could check mass desertion of upper caste voters.
Sources said that Mayawati had already begun to re-emphasise the Dalit factor and only rarely used the Sarvajan hitay phrase coined by her to woo the upper castes. âNow, we are sitting on a double-edged sword; we have to keep the social equation alive, but how far it will work is difficult to predict,â they said.
After the stunning setback, Mayawati directed her party functionaries to hold district wise review meeting to understand the reasons of humiliating defeat during the recently held parliamentary poll. Among other things, the proposed review meetings would examine efficacy of her âinvincible social engineeringâ that had taken Brahmins and Dalits on a single platform during the last Assembly poll.
<b>Her partyâs vote share has gone down from 30.4 per cent in the 2007 Assembly election to 27 per cent in 2009 Lok Sabha election. Translating this into Assembly segments, the mark has come down to 100 from 206 in two years</b>.
<b>The defeat was all the more shocking since, for the total 80 seats in the State, 20 tickets were given to Brahmin candidates, while six tickets went to Thakur candidates. Muslim candidates were fielded in 14 constituencies and the Schedule Castes got a share of 22 seats. It is clear that even the fielding of upper caste candidates did little to gain the support of the non-Dalit voters.
In the end, the Congress - that had won only 22 Assembly seats in 2007 with just 8.6 per cent vote share - took the lead on as many as 95 Assembly segments with a vote share of 18 per cent, bagging 21 Lok Sabha seats. In fact, all the three parties: The BJP, Congress and SP fared better than the ruling BSP in the State in the parliamentary poll. </b>
Party leaders feel that, although they came to power in UP on the promise of bringing together a broad spectrum of society cutting across caste equations, the party failed in fighting criminalisation in politics and promoting effective governance.
The partyâs Brahmin mascot and party general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra - said to be the second-most important person in the State after Mayawati, is likely to feel the heat, although insiders rule out any souring of relations between his leader and him for the moment.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->