BSP banks on Brahmins, Muslims to stop BJP march

The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party is trying to woo the Muslims and Brahmins of Uttar Pradesh by fielding as many as 39 candidates from these sections in the Lok Sabha elections. The move, the BSP leader hopes, will counter the Bharatiya Janata Party’s attempt at social engineering by fielding as many as 35 candidates from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Pre-poll predictions show a direct fight between the BSP and the BJP for most of the 80 seats in the state. In 2009, the BSP had won 20 seats and came second in 47 seats. The BJP won only ten seats.

Both the BJP and the BSP, a Dalit-focused party, will have to field 17 Dalit candidates, as these many seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes/ Tribes in UP. The BSP had won four of these 17 seats, and emerged a close second in 13 seats in 2009.

Though neither of the two parties has officially disclosed the names of their possible candidates, sources inside the BSP say that they have finalised 21 Brahmin candidates and 18 Muslims. Some of these candidates are Kadir Rana (Muzaffarnagar), Shahid Akhlaque (Meerut), Aqeelur Rehman (Sambhal), Kamlesh Shukla (Deoria), Nakul Dubey (Lucknow), Subhash Pandey ( Jaunpur), etc.

“It has been our policy to field candidates as per their share in the population. Jiski jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni bhagidari. This has been the motto of our party and we have been guided by this principle while selecting candidates for the general elections as well,” said Swami Prasad Maurya. But when it was pointed out that Brahmins comprised only 9% of UP’s population and Muslims around 20%, and that the candidates’ list did not reflect this fact, Maurya did not say anything.

But his senior party colleague, Naseemuddin Siddiqi told this correspondent that the BSP was the only party in the country which was fielding the maximum number of Muslim candidates for both the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. “We fielded 86 Muslim candidates in the 2012 Assembly elections, and this time too we have selected 18 Muslims