The Bhartiya Kissan Kamgar Party (BKKP) is set to emerge as a major political force with Samajwadi Party leaders who had deserted Ajit Singh in the last few years planning to rejoin the party.
Ajit Singh, emboldened at the prospect, has already started courting Kanshi Ram for a possible tie up between the two parties.
The new situation, portending new political alignments in the state, has arisen due to various factors. Foremost among them is the realisation on the part of the western UP based Muslim leaders that there staying on in the Samajwadi party, may lead to disastrous consequences for them in the next election.
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Rasheed Masood, who has recently been expelled from the Samajwadi Party, sitting Lok Sabha member Hunawan Hasan, and Haji Akhlaq, who lost from Meerut, feel that in the west the only section of the population who are with the SP are the Muslims. SP is otherwise totally isolated. It does not command any vote on its own. The Muslim leaders see no future for themselves till they go back to the old Jat-Muslims alliance which dominated the west for close to twenty years.
The situation is different in the eastern and the central parts of the state where the SP commands votes of Yadavs and some other sections as well giving them the cutting edge.
Another section which is now increasingly coming round the Kamgar party, as the BKKP is popularly known, are the jats. They had started deserting the BJP in the last elections of 96 for the newly formed Ajit Singh - Tikait party.
The BJP has not able to throw up a Jat leader around whom the jats could rally. The move on the part of the Jats to gather around Ajit Singh - Tikait has gathered momentum, making Ajit Singh a viable political entity again.
The Kamgar party has started efforts to associate with the BSP. Sources point out that Ajit and Kanshi Ram have already met and modalities for future relations have already be settled.
They argue that there is no reason to believe that Mayavati will handover power to the BJP after six months, and in the next elections if they contest with the BJP then they have to contest for very few seats with the BJP taking the lion share. The incentive is very little for BSP to contest with the BJP.