Mayawati set to play the Brahmin card BSP supremo to hold a rally on October 9 to showcase party’s Brahmin following

Mayawati set to play the Brahmin card

BSP supremo to hold a rally on October 9 to showcase party’s Brahmin following

The Bahujan Samaj Party plans to showcase its Brahmin following at a rally here on Tuesday to mark the death anniversary of its founder Kanshiram. Party sources say the BSP is back to its social engineering formula wherein its Brahmin-Dalit combination got it a majority to form the government on its own in the 2007 UP Assembly election. The BSP lost as many as 118 seats in the UP assembly election earlier this year with a mere 3.5% reduction in its votes as compared to 2007. Party insiders say while the BSP’s Dalit votebank has remained rock strong, it is the Brahmin votebank which has depreciated. A senior BSP leader admitted to this correspondent that the large scale misuse of the Dalit Atrocities (Prevention) Act against upper castes was the main reason behind this. Mayawati is out to play the Brahmin card once again. For this, special arrangements are being made for Brahmins at the October 9 rally. In a bid to demonstrate its following, sources say, the party has earmarked a separate enclosure for Brahmins who will attend the rally in their traditional attire, complete with dhoti kurta, ‘Ramnaami’ stole and a ‘tilak’ on the forehead. The BSP’s Brahmin face, national general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra has been entrusted with the responsibility of bringing in a sizeable Brahmin audience. Apart from Mishra, other BSP leaders including Rajya Sabha MP Brijesh Pathak, former ministers Nakul Dube and Ramveer Upadhyay, and senior leader Gopal Narain Mishra have been touring the state over the past one month in a bid to ensure maximum Brahmin presence at the rally. “Behnji (Mayawati) wants to give out the message loud and clear that the Brahmins have not deserted the BSP,” says a senior BSP leader. “This is just a propaganda being spread by rival parties, and we will prove them wrong in this rally,” he asserted. At the rally, Mayawati is expected to rail equally strongly against the SP and the Congress-led UPA governments. Party sources say Akhilesh Yadav’s six-month old government is sure to come in for scathing criticism from Behnji, mainly over the deteriorating law and order. Mayawati would also lash out at the UPA regime on corruption, rising prices, hike in petrol rates and FDI in retail, the sources inform.