The Bharatiya Janata Party, to counter the caste based campaign by the Samajwadi Party, is working on the strategy to win over the Dalit voters by highlighting the State Guest House incident of 1995.

The SP supporters had attacked the then Bahujan Samaj Party general secretary Mayawati who was staying at the State Guest House in Lucknow.

Irked by the attempts of the SP to woo the Dalit votes, BSP president and former chief minister of UP, Mayawati, had recently said that “had there been no guest house incident, SP and BSP would have been ruling the country”.

The Schedule Caste, Schedule Tribe Morcha of the BJP has decided to celebrate the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar on April 14 on a grand scale across the state. The BJP will apprise the people of the role played by BJP leader late Brahm Dutt Dwivedi in June 1995 in protecting BSP supremo Mayawati from the goons of SP in June 1995.

Ram Chandra Kanaujia, state president of the BJP SC, ST Morcha, said here on Wednesday that the BJP would launch a campaign from April 14 to May 5 to apprise the people how the then BJP leader Brahm Dutt Dwivedi had faced the goods unleashed by the SP and protected BSP leader Mayawati.

Kanaujia said that in June 1995, the SP goons had attacked the State Guest House after the BSP withdrew support to the then SP-BSP coalition government. He said the former minister and then MLA from Farrukhabad Brahm Dutt Dwivedi reached the State Guest House and prevented the goons of the SP from harming BSP leader Mayawati.

He said BSP Mayawati had herself admitted that “had there been no Guest House incident, the SP-BSP would still be ruling the country”. Mayawati had made the statement after the SP celebrated the birth anniversary of BSP founder Kanshi Ram and Akhilesh Yadav recently unveiled the statue of Kanshi Ram at Rae Bareli.

Meanwhile, SP general secretary Swami Prasad Maurya criticised the BJP announcement for celebrating the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar. “Let the BJP explain what they want to gain by raking up a three decade old State Guest House incident of 1995. Despite this incident the SP and BSP had forged an alliance ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections and gave a tough fight to the BJP,” Maurya said.