A DALIT-CENTRIC OPPOSITION?

Nagpur on his birth anniversary.

Both parties expectedly faced verbal volleys from BSP chief Mayawati, the original claimant of Ambedkar’s legacy. Addressing a huge gathering in Lucknow marking his 125th birth anniversary, she accused the BJP and Congress of using his name to solicit Dalit votes even though they never cared for Ambedkar or Dalit welfare in the past. One big change in electoral politics surrounding the Dalits that has come from the Una incident and BJP leader Dayashankar Singh’s misogynistic comment on Mayawati is that the BSP has got a new lease of life. The party which had lost a number of senior leaders following Mayawati’s poor showing in 2014 is suddenly back in the news again. The possibility of replicating the BSP’s 2007 electoral engineering by blending Dalit and Brahmin votes looked impossible with declining Dalit support and upper castes siding with the BJP. After Singh’s comment, however, the BSP’s mega rally in Lucknow was a massive show of strength.

Meanwhile, the Congress, which appointed a Brahmin CM candidate in Sheila Dikshit, also has a Dalit strategy for the state. It has prepared 400 young men and women, spread across 75 districts, to visit Dalit households, informing them about what the Congress has done for the community. “Earlier, our messages targeted those above 35. Now we’re focusing on those between 18 and 35,” Raju says. Trying to regain political relevance in UP and Punjab, the Congress will publish two manifestos in the runup to the 2017 assembly polls—a main document with A TALE OF TWO PARTIES Changing shares of the Dalit vote explain the swinging fortunes of the two national parties NUMBER OF SC SEATS WON IN LOK SABHA ELECTIONS