Several political pundits criticised Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav for unveiling the statue of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) founder and senior Dalit leader Kanshi Ram in Raebareli, calling it an attempt to woo the numerically significant backward group voters ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The move, they said, was made after the SP lost all hope of an alliance with the BSP. The Bahujan Samaj Party too slammed the act, calling it “a fake politically driven gesture”.
“In politically sensitive Uttar Pradesh, every move is calculated, especially when the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls are round the corner. The SP chief’s decision to unveil the statue of the BSP founder seems to be a deliberate step that was made after the SP failed to get any response from the BSP in the context of the proposed opposition alliance,” said Shashikant Pandey, head of the department of political science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow.
He said that wooing Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalits is the Samajwadi Party’s new agenda in order to gain mileage in the upcoming polls.
BSP supremo Mayawati said, “The SP is trying to manipulate Dalit voters in the name of Kanshi Ram, which is the new agenda of the party. But SP’s long history of its caste-driven hatred and malice towards Dalits is known to all.”
She also called Dalits the most loyal voters and stated that her party has always stood by them. The SP voters, she said, are known for shifting loyalties, which is the main reason for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) resurgence in Uttar Pradesh. Mayawati said that had SP been so serious about Dalits, it would have opposed the bill on reservation in promotions. The party has always shown disrespect towards the BSP’s saints and icons, she said. Moreover, it had also renamed Bhimrao Ambedkar Park, Sant Ravidas Nagar, Manyawar Kanshiram Ji Nagar and Manyawar Shri Kanshi Ram ji Urdu-Arbi Farsi University, she added. SP founder member Mulayam Singh Yadav did not declare state mourning on Kanshi Ram’s death, said Mayawati.
Responding to this, SP national general secretary Swami Prasad Maurya said, “The BSP today has deviated from the path shown by its founder Kanshi Ram and Babasaheb Ambedkar. There is an urgent need for the followers of Kanshi Ram and Mulayam Singh Yadav to join hands once again for nation-building. It is time to carry forward the idea of social justice that the two leaders had first shared in 1993.”
Maurya, a former close aide of Mayawati, organised the statue unveiling function in Raebareli.
According to sources, the SP leadership feels that an OBC-Dalit combination, in at least a dozen Lok Sabha constituencies, has the ability to be a game changer on the strength of the numbers. Dalits account for around 20% of Uttar Pradesh’s population.
The SP-BSP alliance was widely perceived to be a threat to the BJP ahead of the 2019 national polls. But the saffron party won 62 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats.
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