To prepare ground for return of the Party in this biggest state of the country having maximum 80 Parliament seats, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati is likely to make direct interaction with the public through `Chupal’.
Interestingly Mayawati never in the past had made such campaign and used to hold just big rallies. However, this time, to counter the Bharatiya Janta Party’s reach to Dalit’s hamlet to attract their `vote bank’, Mayawati had reportedly decided to handle the challenge on her own by starting `chaupal’ programmes particularly in those areas which were dominated by dalits. It may be mentioned that recently BJP had started ``Gram Swaraj’ to woo dalits by asking their ministers to hold chupal and eat dinners in the houses of the Dalits.
Sources in the Bahujan Samaj Party confirmed that senior leaders of the Party had chalked out a plan to take on BJP’s move of attracting dalit voters. As per the sources in the Party, Mayawati has given her consent to take the campaign on her own. She is likely to start visiting areas dominated by dalit’s and hold a chaupal, directly interacting with the people to know about their problems and assured them of what measures, the BSP would take after coming to power.
Sources further said that the BSP also prepared a list of incidents in which BJP government’s facilitated attacks on Dalit communities, or how the atrocities on the community increased after coming of Narendra Modi led government. Not only this, Mayawati, whom the union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, just on Thursday called as `anti-dalit’, would inform the dalits that how the Central Government is slowly diluting the SC and ST Act, how the government took no interest to pursue the matter of reservation of dalits in promotions in government jobs etc. Sources confirmed that besides Mayawati, the district coordinator of the area, along with local leaders of the Party including the aspirants for the Parliament elections, all will attend `chaupal’ probably starting sometime in the next month.
It may be mentioned that Mayawati had already ordered zonal coordinators to strengthen the Party at booth level in wake of next Parliament elections. She also asked to look for a potential candidates in all the 80 Parliament seats (except for Amethi and Rae Bareli where the Party already announced not to field any candidate) irrespective of her decision to fight the next lok Sabha elections in alliance with Samajwadi Party. Mayawati wanted the Party to get ready for the fight on all seats in case her understanding with the SP leaders failed particularly on seat sharing.