It's battle for Dalit votes in Maharashtra

In politics sometimes the friend of an enemy can be your friend too. This is just what happened to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

While the Congress and the new entrant, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), addressing the same Dalit constituency, ended up splitting the vote between them, the anti-Congress vote consolidated like never before and gave an unprecedented edge to the BJP.

The crucial Dalit vote, around 9 per cent in Maharashtra and over 23 per cent in Vidarbha, has become the fulcrum of power equations in the state. The old caste configurations are, however, just not applicable to the Assembly polls.

The Dalit vote bank in Maharashtra is a politically aware entity, and has long provided the lead to other parts of the country. Notably, it was the working and domination of the Republican Party of India (RPI), which inspired BSP founder Kanshi Ram.

Now of course, while the BSP is a political power house with 18 MPs in the Lok Sabha and the RPI is a depleted force with just Ramdas Athawale as its representative in Delhi.

The reason for its declining strength can be attributed to infighting and Prakash Ambedkar, Athawale and Yogendra Kavade parting ways. Ambedkar and Kavade lost the Lok Sabha elections this time.

The BSP and the RPI now appear to be engaged in a tussle to be the undisputed Dalit champion. The Dalit vote bank is further split into neo-Buddhists who are mostly supporters of the RPI and the Hindu Dalits who earlier voted the Congress and are now the BSP supporters.

The RPI, whose political influence is clear on the Dalit intelligentsia, is losing out to an aggressive brand of politics practised by the BSP and its leader Mayawati.

Her image of a bold leader who is serious about ensuring Dalits' participation in power has found many takers in Vidarbha. Beyond the more intense Congress-NCP versus Shiv Sena-BJP fight is the RPI and the BSP tussle for the Dalit vote bank.

All eyes are on October 3 and 4, when Mayawati and Sonia Gandhi are set to visit Vidarbha, to find out whether it is the Congress supported RPI or the BSP, which will carry the day on October 13, thereby changing the face of Maharashtra politics.