State News And Discussion - 3

[ramana]

Pioneer article mentioned above.

NATION | Tuesday, February 8, 2011 | Email | Print | | Back

BJP plans to wean away Brahmins

February 09, 2011 3:17:20 AM

Kumar Uttam | New Delhi

The BJP is ready with its ‘Mission Uttar Pradesh’ that sets the target for the party to wean Brahmins away from the Bahujan Samaj Party and check Congress’ upsurge in the State.



Desperate to end its long wait to return to power in the State, where it has been reduced to a marginal player, BJP’s strategy in UP is to present a united face of its State leadership, play to the upper caste gallery and rejuvenate its cadres.



Starting with national vice-president Kalraj Mishra’s appointment as head of the campaign committee, the BJP intends to shortlist several ‘winnable’ candidates from upper caste, particularly Brahmins, to make inroads into Mayawati’s vote bank. The 70-year-old Mishra may eventually be projected as BJP’s Chief Ministerial candidate in the 2012 Assembly elections.



“Brahmins’ influence over UP politics is quite disproportionate to their numerical strength. They have been our traditional voters and we need to consolidate on that. Surveys have already begun at the ground level to identify good candidates,” a senior BJP leader privy to the party’s strategy told The Pioneer here on Monday.



BJP, though, is worried that Congress not only threatens to eat into the upper caste vote share but can actually make a difference to the final tally, if the last Lok Sabha election results are anything to go buy.



“The only advantage that we have over the Congress is that unlike them we have a solid cadre base. Successive electoral losses have demoralised them and our principal target it to rejuvenate them by at least presenting a united face of the leadership”, the party leader said.



Sources claim Mishra’s appointment was done in consultation with all factions of the central leaders having some stake in UP politics and the state leadership. Moreover, party president Nitin Gadkari has asked party leaders to bury their hatchets in the larger interest of the party.



The effect was quite visible at a recent rally in Kanpur where, for the first time in recent past, the entire state leadership attended a rally. Not many central leaders participated in it.



The party is seriously considering a proposal to take out a yatra — though its nomenclature could be different — simultaneously from different parts of the state. Kalraj would obviously lead one of them and former BJP president Rajnath Singh, who also happens to be a former CM of UP, would undertake another.



Party leaders also see a ray of hope in findings of recent surveys, which suggests delimitation, that has changed profiles of the constituency, has brought BJP in direct contest with its rivals — BSP, SP and the Congress — in at least 283 seats of the State.



The change is also attributed to the reason that number of seats where the ‘anti-BJP votes’ were the deciding factor has also claimed to have reduced drastically.

So this is what accounts for the BJP to get 130 seats vs 72 seats of the INC survey.