The Hindu : New Delhi News : ‘Social engineering’ to be BSP’s trump card for Delhi

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 26, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

New Delhi

New Delhi

‘Social engineering’ to be BSP’s trump card for Delhi

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

Party announces names of 66 candidates for Assembly polls

Six candidates have been chosen from among government servants
BSP has also constituted 17 “Bhaichara Committees” as part of its outreach programme

NEW DELHI: For the Congress in the Capital, the battle with the Bahujan Samaj Party in the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections later this year will not be restricted to the 12 reserved Scheduled Caste constituencies but extend to other parts of the city as well. For Mayawati’s party has adopted the same “social engineering” concept for Delhi that it had employed so successfully for the last Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

With the battle of the ballot in Delhi also being multi-cornered, any rise of the BSP would not bode well for the Congress for it would mean a split in “secular votes” and gain for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is confident of a good showing and is seeking to wrest control of power in the Delhi Assembly.

The Delhi BSP is upbeat about a good performance in the Capital as the party is now taking people from all sections along with it.

“It is not the Dalits alone who vote for us. We have candidates from all sections of society and we expect people from across the spectrum to vote for us,” says party State unit president Jageram Bhati.

The BSP has announced the names of its candidates for 66 of the 70 Delhi Assembly constituencies. Six of these candidates have been chosen from among government servants. The other 60 belong to various strata of society.

Contrary to popular perception that the party would only be looking to target Dalit votes, it has given tickets for 22 of the 60 seats to members of so-called forward castes, 20 to the backward castes, 13 to Scheduled Castes and five to Muslims.

While the party is led by a woman leader, only three women candidates have made it to the list of 60.

Meanwhile, in order to increase its influence among all sections, the BSP has also constituted 17 “Bhaichara Committees” as part of its outreach programme.

“Members of all communities, be it Jats or Gujjars or forward castes, are now joining hands with the party,” Mr. Bhati said, adding that the preparations at the organisational well are also in place and 14 district committees have been constituted. Each of these committees would take care of five Assembly segments and two each would look after a parliamentary constituency.

For the BSP, the core issues in the elections would be price rise and nuclear deal. ``We would be raising these issues along with other local issues like sealing and demolition and power supply,” Mr. Bhati said.

National meeting

The Delhi leadership of the party is now awaiting the August 9 national meeting to be chaired by Ms. Mayawati where directions are expected to be issued on the strategy to be adopted for the forthcoming elections.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi