Bucking the perception of being the ‘B’ team of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is set to spoil the prospects of the BJP in the first two rounds of voting for Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Ahead of the BSP’s first big-ticket rally in western U.P.’s Nagina constituency on April 6, to be addressed by party leader Akash Anand, the caste equation of the party’s candidates for the 16 seats that go to polls on April 19 and 26 reveals that party supremo Mayawati aims to dent the vote banks of both the ruling NDA and the Opposition INDIA bloc in the region.
Both the Samajwadi Party and the BSP are struggling to fight against the combined strength of the BJP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in the region. However, political observers say that the BSP’s strategy is to build its core vote bank of Jatavs by using discontentment among specific communities to its advantage, while hoping that Muslims will show faith in Ms. Mayawati’s non-partisan stand.
