While pro and anti-BJP forces are grouping up ahead of the 2019 lok Sabha polls and have been bolstered by the Kairana bypoll results, a newly formed outfit Bhim Army, seems to be working on a different agenda.
Even the BJP and RSS leaders accept thatthe outfit played a pivotal role in ensuring defeat to the lotus party nominee at Kairana.
The Bhim Army came into limelight after Saharanpur caste riots in 2017 and was now preparing to contest lok Sabha elections. Though its declared agenda is to defeat the BJP, an undisclosed agenda is also to gradually eat into crucial Dalit votes thereby marginalising the BSP cfrom UP’s realpolitik.
Bhim Army activists are moving from village to village in western UP, identifying Dalit dwellings and interacting with the local inhabitants there.
Sources claimed that Bhim Army have been quietly gathering popularity and accepatnce among Dalits in western UP districts.Besides, they were also mustering support for an agitation to seek the release of its founder Chandra Shekhar ‘Ravan’, who has been in jail on charges of engineering caste riots in Saharanpur last year.
“Bhim Army activists have been regularly visiting us. They inform us of the emerging political situation and how we need to assert our might in the 21019 general elections. They also show us pictures of Mayawati’s bungalows in lucknow and Delhi and ask us what benefits did we get during her regimes as Chief Minister,” said Dharmendra Sonkar (54), who migrated from lucknow to Saharanpur and runs a garment business in Mukhlispur area.
Sonkar said that he went to Saharanpur ten years ago to visit a relative because he had no job in lucknow.
“The local Dalits convinced me to stay there and start a business. Two years ago, Bhim Army people started shielding me from atrocities by police and other officials. There are many others like me who have found a foothold in society because of the Bhim Army,” he claimed.
Sources said that Dalit youths, in large number, are joining Bhim Army because they subscribe to its aggressive brand of politics.
“People talk of the BSP factor in BJP’s defeat in Kairana and Noorpur bypolls but they forget that Mayawati did not even appeal for the opposition candidates. It was Bhim Army that backed the opposition in order to defeat the BJP,” remarked a political observer.
After his release from jail recently, Bhim Army leader Vinay Ratan Singh said “We are working silently but in a decisive manner. We are mobilizing public support and against the BJP. People trust us as we have no history of having joined hands with the BJP like BSP.”
He said that the Army’s priority was to ensure the release of Chandra Shekhar from jail before they draw up a political strategy.
As for an alliance with the BSP, Singh curtly said, “We are on a different platform.”