Uttar Pradesh : The Desperate Call

Mayawati, whose party failed to win even a single seat in Lok Sabha 2014 elections, going a step forward to appease Muslim vote bank in Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections at the cost of core ideology propogated by Kanshi Ram

Raj Bahadur Singh from Lucknow  
Though the occasion was the tenth death anniversary of founder president of Bahujan Samaj party (BSP) Kanshi Ram, the maverick party chief Mayawati passing through the most crucial phase of her political career chose to ignore her mentor in her nearly one and a half hour long speech and focussed only on luring the Muslims and that too in most illogical manner on the cost of her own Schedule Caste votes which proved to be the core vote of BSP since its inception.
The hype which was created for October 9 rally in Lucknow proved counter productive  for multiple reasons. The first and foremost was the number of attendance which was below the standard of the usual rallies of party held in past. What  more astonishing  was the fact that the ardent
supporters of Mayawati did not hesitate to admit this fact. For example Purushottam who came from Shahjehanpur and used to be frequent visitor of earlier rallies did not hide his disappointment and termed it as an “average” rally. Sochanlal who came from Chandauli was more forthwith in an interesting way as he claimed that he found it quite easy to arrive and depart this time round. “It took only thirty minutes while I had to struggle at least two hours during rallies held in past,” he commented.

As this was the first leg of disappointment the very thin attendance of other than SCs really sent shockers to the rank and file. Even by conservative estimate the participation was heavily tilted in favour of party’s axis vote while Muslims, OBCs and Sarva Samaj (mainly comprising of upper castes) were in far less numbers. Precisely the ratio was 80:20, SCs and rest respectively.
In the scorching heat while Mayawati was approaching to the end of her lacklustre and uninspiring address the some sort of stampede took place leaving three dead and several people injured. As was expected the BSP blamed the local administration and police for mishandling the situation while the authorities denied it and held the organisers responsible as it was an inside mismanagement. The insensitivity further cropped up as the amount of compensation to the kins of deceased became the bone of contention. None of the senior BSP leaders bothered to visit the kins of deceased yet the blame game was on for quite some time.
Now the most important aspect of the rally which was also viewed as the launching of the BSP campaign for the upcoming Assembly elections was the call for the Muslims to get united and throw their lot behind BSP to keep the BJP away from power which is eying the most populous state after losing it to the opponents one and half decade back.
Citing the inner bickering in the ruling Yadav clan the BSP chief called upon them to not waste their vote and desist from backing Samajwadi Party.
The desperate call of Mayawati is quite understandable. The party which failed to win even a single seat in 2014 Lok Sabha election is devoid of several segments of votes which it used to enjoy, thanks to the consisted efforts of Kanshi Ram in early eighties and nineties. The most backward castes (MBCs) which were backbone of the party has withered away and upper castes seem least
enthusiastic to back the blue brigade.  
As it had been the practice of Mayawati to deal with the politics of convenience and deliberately ignore the realism. She attributed the division of Muslims to the splendid Lok Sabha performance of the BJP and cautioned not to repeat the mistake. While mentioning the Aligarh Muslim University she apprehended the status of its minority status in danger but unfortunately it did not seem to bother her that the provision of reservation to the SCs were being completely ignored by these minority status institutes.
The reason for this is simple. She treats the SCs mainly her own caste Jatavs as her bonded labours being more than confident about their solidarity with the party. Now being devoid of MBCs and upper castes she is pinning hopes on Muslims and much to the misfortune of SCs the axis of blue brigade, has blind folded herself. The BSP is all set to give nearly 150 tickets to the Muslims out of 403 Assembly seats in the State. She is leaving no stone unturned to create fear of PM Modi among Muslims though the truth remains that she herself is fearful of PM and has been engulfed by Modi fobia which was yet again evident
during rally on October 9.