MAYA’S 2007 ORDER PROVIDES BJP FRESH AMMO

LUCKNOW : An order of October 29, 2007 passed by the then Mayawati government ordering the state police to ensure that no innocent is victimised under the SC/ST Act has provided the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government an opportunity to re-connect with Dalits and “expose Mayawati’s double speak.”

The BSP had extended support to Monday’s Dalit protests over an alleged dilution of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

BJP leaders have already taken to social media to “expose” the BSP and in the coming few days the party plans to hit Dalit dominated villages in the state with a copy of Mayawati government’s 2007 order.

There are 21 per cent Dalits in UP who play a crucial role during elections and the BJP has already tasked its state Dalit body chief Kaushal Kishore, an MP from the state, to take out a yatra through Dalit dominated localities and tell people about “Mayawati’s double speak”.

“After setbacks in 2012, 2014 and 2017, Mayawati had hoped for a turnaround. The SC/ST issue provided a ray hope as the issue came in the backdrop of several incidents of damage to Ambedkar statues in the state.

But the BJP would now seek to turn the tables on her plans,” said Athar Siddiqui of the Centre of Objective Research and Development.

In 2012 UP polls, the Samajwadi Party had made inroads into the BSP’s Dalit vote bank by winning 58 out of the 85 reserved assembly constituencies in the state. After that the BSP failed to win even a single reserved seat in UP as BJP won all 17 reserved Lok Sabha seat from the state in the Modi wave. In 2017 UP polls, the BSP managed to win just 2 of the 85 reserved seats with BJP and allies winning 75 seats.

“For an entire day most of UP as indeed the rest of the country was held to ransom on an issue on which we had cleared our stand at the outset. Despite the fact that our government quickly went up in appeal, Mayawati kept on blaming the BJP for not doing enough on the apex court’s March 20 order. Dalits of the country would surely like Mayawati to explain her own order now,” the former DGP Brijlal, a dalit who is now in BJP, said.

Even BJP’s ally, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party that has shared uneasy ties with the BJP has slammed BSP on the issue.

“It’s true that Mayawati needs to explain her sudden about turn on the issue,” SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar, a minister in the Yogi government, said on Wednesday.