Congress brass warms up to statehood for Bundelkhand

The Centre's approval for a railway spare parts factory, a drought relief package amounting to Rs 1,800 crore and enough hints that the upcoming Budget will make a special mention of the 13 districts comprising Bundelkhand "" a region divided between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh "" has brought the area to the epicentre of Hindi heartland politics.

The demand for statehood for this 70,000-sq-km area has been hanging fire for the last 15 years. The area, buffeted by constant droughts and suffering a feudal social structure and backwardness, has never attracted as much attention as in the last couple of months.

The reason, according to senior Congress sources, is the party's need for a foothold in Uttar Pradesh, where it has slid to the ignominious fourth position.

"Bundelkhand sends at least 21 MLAs to the UP Assembly only from the seven districts that fall in the state. This time, 14 of these went to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The area has a large population of Ahirwars, similar to Mayawati's Jatav community. Nearly 25.14 per cent of the area's population is scheduled caste, higher than the national average," said a Congress leader.

Since Mayawati has been consistently poaching on what the Congress considers its core vote bank "" Dalits and Brahmins "" a new logic is being applied to ask for a separate state.

"What is good for the BSP must be good for the Congress. We have to fight the BSP. Even if its means fighting it out in smaller areas like Bundelkhand, Harit Pradesh and Rohilkhand, so be it," said the leader, a key strategist in the party.

The bifurcation or even the trifurcation of Uttar Pradesh will also lessen the number of MPs the state sends to Parliament and help the Congress retain power.

For this, the Congress has broken faith with its consistent policy of opposing smaller states. General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, in fact, said smaller states were more manageable.

Mayawati, on her part, is sitting pretty and has no problem if the region is carved out into a separate state. "She is anyway in a good position in the area. It cannot hurt her to have another BSP chief minister," said a BSP leader on phone from Lucknow.

People from the region have been complaining that the vast resources of the area "" diamonds in Panna, granite and even tourism "" amounting to more than Rs 5,000 crore are not making their way back to the area. It seems political expediency may finally lead to the creation of a separate state called Bundelkhand.