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A day after attacking opposition parties for purportedly trying to appropriate the legacy of Bhimrao Ambedkar to woo dalits for electoral gains, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) President Mayawati on Wednesday virtually blew the poll bugle for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.
Though the state elections are two years away, Mayawati has started to build momentum to organise her cadre, boost their sagging morale and capitalise on the anti-incumbency of both the central and state governments.
She purportedly wants to fuel her campaign with the burning issues, including unseasonal rains and hailstorms, reported farmers’ suicide cases, stir by farmers over land acquisition Bill, deterioration of law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.
Besides, the proposed unification of the socialist outfits under Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch and her arch rival Mulayam Singh Yadav has put another equation to the already fragmented electorate profile in the state.
Over the years, BSP’s core constituency of Dalits, Brahmins and a section of Muslims have eroded and shifted to either the Samajwadi Party or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), helping them gain at her party’s expense.
Mayawati is now reenergising her party, since her opponents are out to woo the dalits to their camps by espousing the cause of dalit pantheons, including Ambedkar.After holding a massive public meeting in Lucknow yesterday on the occasion of the 124 th birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar, she held a meeting with party’s UP leaders. Tomorrow, she would hold another meeting with BSP leaders from other states.
Addressing the media, she announced a nationwide agitation programme beginning on April 27 to expose the alleged failure of both the Narendra Modi-led central government and Akhilesh Yadav-led Uttar Pradesh government in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh polls.
On April 27, BSP supporters will hold demonstrations at all the district headquarters in the state to highlight issues related to farmers and the poor. On May 2, similar agitation programmes would be held across the country.
“The strategy of future demonstrations would be charted out after the start of Parliament session from April 20 and the response of the Centre on key issues highlighted by us,” she said.
Referring to the proposed amendments in the land acquisition Act, 2013, Mayawati flayed the Modi government as anti-poor and anti-farmers. She said it was only working in the interests of capitalists and big corporations.
She slammed the Yadav government in the state for its failure to provide succour to farmers in the current crisis of unseasonal rains and hailstorms.
In 2012, the BSP had lost power in UP at the hands of the SP, which made maximum capital of the negative perception of the then Mayawati dispensation, rocked by multiple case of corruption and allegation of embezzlement of public funds in parks and memorials. The BSP could win only 80 seats in the 403 member state Assembly.She had blamed en bloc voting by Muslims in favour of the SP for her electoral defeat. She said ‘communal politics’ played by the Congress and the BJP over minorities sub-quota had created fear among Muslims and almost 70 per cent of the community votes went to the SP.In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BSP could not win even a single seat out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP, while the BJP swept the polls on the back of “Modi wave”.
