The Uttar Pradesh Congress plans to start a roughly 45-day ‘Dalit Gaurav Samvad’ from October 9, the death anniversary of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) founder Kanshi Ram, in an outreach effort towards Dalits. The programme is set to end on November 26, celebrated as Constitution day.
“We have planned various programmes under Dalit Gaurav Samvad. We will connect with one lakh influential Dalits [250 in each Vidhan Sabha]. Through the events, we will discuss agendas related to Dalit issues in each parliamentary segment,” Anil Yadav, Uttar Pradesh Congress organisational secretary told The Hindu. The party also planned administrative division-wise events bringing the Dalit issues to the fore. “Everyone knows Dalits are being continuously marginalised in the BJP government; we will collect the ground realities about atrocities committed on them,” added Mr. Yadav.
The ‘Dalit Gaurav Samvad’ comes under the party’s new found strategy of ‘Backward outreach’ with former Congress president Rahul Gandhi pushing for percentage-wise representation and caste census.
