Pune: The Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh, along with other left-leaning, Ambedkarite and ‘progressive’ parties will fight the 2019 Parliamentary and Assembly elections under the common banner the ‘Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi’, BBM chief Prakash Ambedkar announced on Wednesday.
“I welcome all liberal, progressive parties under this banner. The doors of this front are open to a party which agrees to put up candidates from the Vimukta Jati (nomadic tribes), the minority community, OBC community and other politically backward communities,” said Mr. Ambedkar.
The BBM president said he planned to field candidates under the newly-floated banner from 48 Lok Sabha constituencies to take on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Charting a broad strategy his party would adopt in the Parliamentary and Assembly polls due next year, Mr. Ambedkar, however, remained ambivalent about a possible alliance with the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
“While I do not regard [NCP supremo] Sharad Pawar as ‘regressive’, some of his stand on certain issues certainly are … However, I appreciate his gesture of presenting the Phule pagdi (turban) [to OBC leader Chhagan Bhujbal] instead of the traditional Puneri pagdi,” he said.
During the 2009 general and Maharashtra Assembly elections, Mr. Ambedkar’s party had contested in a similarly patched-up coalition which featured a ragtag of parties bound together by broadly compatible ideologies.
The mega-coalition, which was named the ‘Republican Davi Lokshahi Samiti’ (Ridalos), included the Republican Party of India faction led by Ramdas Athawale and several Left and socialist parties. However, as an alternative to the grand alliances of the Congress-NCP and the Sena-BJP, this ambitious ‘third front’ came a cropper, managing to win barely three State Assembly seats.
Mr. Ambedkar said there were signs that the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition in Maharashtra would go go the Kashmir way. “If the Sena boycotts the upcoming monsoon session, we may see a replay of the political situation in Kashmir, where the alliance has crumbled,” he said.
‘Politically motivated’
Accusing the police of framing him in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon violence, Mr. Ambedkar said the investigation was “clearly politically motivated”.
“The police are falsely linking my name with Naxalism…they cannot touch the organisers of the ‘Elgaar Parishad’, retired judges P.B. Sawant and B.G. Kolse-Patil owing to their past positions in the judiciary, hence they [investigating authorities] are after me,” he alleged.
