This refers to the report, “Paswan back in NDA fold” (February 28). A tall Dalit leader and chief of lok Janshakti Party, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan had quit the NDA after the 2002 Gujarat violence.
The BJP recently entered into an alliance with Mr Ramdas Athawale's Republican Party of India in Maharashtra, and with prominent OBC leader Upendra Kushwaha's political outfit, the Rashtriya lok Samata Party, in Bihar. In Uttar Pradesh, former bureaucrat and Dalit activist Udit Raj has joined the BJP and is likely to contest the lok Sabha election.
The senior Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh, Mr Jagdambika Pal, feeling ignored in the Congress, is also said to be inclined towards the BJP. The BJP is no more a political outcast, politics of secularism is no more saleable and the Dalits and the backwards are no more the monopoly of regional parties. Charisma, clean image and reputation of the party's prime ministerial candidate, Mr Narendra Modi, seem to be working in a big way.