BJP uses ‘sui-dhagaa’ to stitch dalit connect on Ambedkar Jayanti

LUCKNOW: Amid ongoing lockdown to contain spread of SarsCov-2, Darshana Singh, chief of BJP’s women wing in Uttar Pradesh, was busy stitching masks using cotton cloth, thread and needle on the eve of Ambedkar Jayanti on Monday.

“I don’t have a sewing machine so I am stitching triple layered cloth masks by hand. There are various other women who are also stitching them. We will give these to women from poor and weaker sections at booth level while maintaining social distancing on Ambedkar Jayanti,” she said from her home in Chakhania village in Chandauli district. In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, the Yogi government has made face masks compulsory in the state.

“BJP women wing alone has stitched more than a lakh masks and various NGOs and other party wings were preparing more of them,” Darshana said.

Mask preparation and distribution along with feeding at least two poor families in slum areas are part of the BJP’s latest ploy to maintain connect with UP’s 21 per cent dalits. Ambedkar Mahasabha chief in Lucknow Lalji Nirmal said he had appealed to all to celebrate Ambedkar Jayanti by remaining in their homes. “We have urged people to light a lamp and upload videos of home celebration with social distancing,” he said.

This year, though the novel coronavirus has impacted party’s dalit outreach campaign, BJP’s upper caste MP in Kushinagar Vijay Dubey quickly seized an opportunity to connect with the community at Bhujauli Khurd village in Kushinagar dominated by Muslims and Jatavs, the dalit sub-caste to which BSP chief Mayawati belongs.

On April 5, Dubey had rushed to Bhujali Khurd village in Kushinagar to dine with the people on hearing that some of them had refused to have food that the dalit gram pradhan had prepared for five who were quarantined in village as a mandatory protocol for all outsiders. “My wife Leelawati Devi, who is the village head, made food for them but one of them refused because we are dalits. Only after BJP MP arrived and counselled them that everyone started eating” said Subhash Gautam, a Jatav.