Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati is pinning her hopes of on strategising her next political move on the divisional workers’ maharally scheduled in Meerut on Monday. Two months on the same date, Mayawati had resigned from Rajya Sabha. Party leaders of western UP are leaving no stone unturned to make the rally a success as it was necessary for the future of BSP and its supremo. The maharally is set to mark the launch of BSP’s campaign for the 2019 lok Sabha poll. For the first time, Mayawati’s brother Anand Kumar and his foreign-educated son Akash would be witnessed at the dais in the maha rally on Monday.
Following BSP’s poor performance in the 2017 Assembly polls preceded by its failure to pocket even a single seat in 2014 lok Sabha poll, the Meerut rally is seen as BSP’s first major effort to mobilise cadres and motivate them in Meerut, Moradabad and Saharanpur divisions. In the 2017 Assembly poll, the party could win only Dholna seat in Ghaziabad from the entire region which sends more that 60 legislators to UP Assembly. BSP supporters have launched a massive campaign on the social media to mobilise workers for the conference. Mayawati is also holding regular meetings with party leaders at her official luccknow residence to review preparations. In an invitation sent to the media on Saturday, Mayawati said that the maharally has been conveened to expose the anti-people, anti-poor, anti-farmers and anti-labourers stance of the BJP government.
She said that BSP supporters from three divisions— Meerut, Saharanpur and Moradabad, would be attending the maharally at Vedvyaspuri on Delhi Road in Meerut on Monday.
Mayawati has already started screening candidates for 80 lok Sabha seats and appointing them as in-charge of lok Sabha constituencies. The candidates have been entrusted with the task of transporting party workers to the rally site on September 18. A BSP leader said that the rally could throw up a surprise announcement of a bigger role to Mayawati’s brother Anand Kumar, who has been appointed BSP’s national vice-president and his son Akash, who returned to the country after completing an MBA course from a foreign university.
“To win over the youths, Mayawati has planned to promote Akash in the organisation and also assign him a bigger role in politics,” he said.
Mayawati, who resigned from the Rajya Sabha on July 18 alleging that she was not allowed to speak on Dalit atrocities in the Upper House, was planning to highlight her sacrifice for the community during her speech.
After rebellion by senior leaders rattled the party, Mayawati plans to send across the message that despite revolts she enjoyed the support of party workers. The rally has been strategically planned in west UP which has a large Muslim populace. After Meerut, the party will hold meetings on the 18th day of every month at divisional headquarters and the exercise is likely to continue till next year. The BSP will also organise demonstrations on public issues in UP and other states. Mayawati threw a spanner in the Opposition plan to form anti-BJP alliance by turning down a proposal to attend the ‘BJP Bhagao, Desh Bachao’ rally organised by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief lalu Prasad Yadav in Patna on August 27. Questioning the efforts of Opposition parties to form a secular alliance to challenge the BJP in 2019 lok Sabha poll, Mayawati said that parties should finalise seat-sharing before forging a pre-poll alliance. On its part, the grand secular alliance has not given up on Mayawati and even offered her to contest the lok Sabha bypoll at Phoolpur which will be vacated by Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya after his election to legislative Council. Earlier, Mayawati had announced that she would not contest elections and the BSP would not field a candidate in the bypolls but in the changed scenario, she might do a rethink.