In new social engineering for UP civic polls, Mayawati replaces Brahmins with Muslims in BSP’s Dalit equation

Significantly, the Mayawati-led BSP, which has lost considerable ground in the state since losing the 2012 Assembly election, has nominated 11 Muslim faces out of a total 17 mayoral candidates, with the remainder consisting of three Other Overdue Classes (OBC) and two Scheduled Caste Nominees (SC).

Mayawati’s move to field Muslim candidates even on OBC-reserved seats sends a clear signal that, in the wake of repeated BSP electoral setbacks over the past decade, he is now trying to engage in new social engineering by replacing Brahmins with Muslims in their reorganized social arithmetic. .

Mayawati had ruled the state during 2007-2012 with the support of the Brahmins. She then sought to project the BSP as a party of “Sarvjans (all people)” rather than just “Bahujans (underprivileged sections)”. Then her social engineering involved support from the Brahmin community along with her core support base in the form of South Carolina voters.

However, in the upcoming mayoral elections, the BSP has not fielded a single Brahmin candidate. The only

The upper caste ticket that the party has given for this election goes to Naval Kishore Nathani in Gorakhpur, who belongs to the Agrawal (Bania) community.

Mayawati has fielded Dalit candidates in only two SC reserved seats: Lata in Agra Municipal Corporation (reserved for SC women) and Bhagwan Das Phule in Jhansi.

The three BSP OBC candidates for the mayoral election are Archana Nishad in the Kanpur civic body, a reserved seat for women, Rammurthi Yadav in Ayodhya (unreserved seat) and Subhash Chandra Majhi in Varanasi (unreserved).

In four mayoral seats reserved by the OBC, the BSP has awarded tickets to Muslim candidates, including Khadija Masood in Saharanpur, Hasmat Ali in Meerut, Shagufta Anjum in Shahjahanpur (lower class women) and

Rukhsana Begum in Firozabad (lower class women).

In two of the three civic body mayoral positions reserved for women, the BSP has also fielded Muslim candidates: Nisara Khan in Ghaziabad and Shaheen Bano in good luck now.

The other Muslim candidates running in general category seats include Salman Shahid in Aligarh, Yusuf Khan in

Bareilly, Raza Mohattasim Ahmed in Mathura, Sayeed Ahmed in Prayagraj and Mohd Yameen in Mooradabad.

speaking to the indian expressA senior BSP official said: “Behenji (Mayawati) has observed that the social engineering that worked for the party in 2007 did not work in the next four Assemblies and Parliament elections. Hence, this time there is a change of approach as the civic polls would lay the groundwork for the Lok Sabha elections. Like Dalits, Muslims feel severely deprived in their current state. They have been left alone even by the samajwadi party (SP), who made politics with their votes but did not comply”

BSP leaders claim that the party’s Dalit-Muslim mix would be a more formidable force than the SP’s Muslim-Yadav formula.

The BSP leaders are also trying to send a message to the Muslim community about the Mayawati government’s work for their welfare and progress. They also highlight how Mayawati had shared power with Muslim leaders in government or legislatures, citing the example of Nasimuddin Siddiqui, who is now in Congress.

“The interest of the Muslim community is safe only in the hands of the BSP. Behenji created the Urdu Farsi University in addition to guaranteeing scholarships for minority students,” said BSP Senior Leader Dharamveer Chaudhary. “BSP would strengthen the minority community and they would strengthen BSP.”

Speaking to The Indian Express, the BSP’s UP Western Coordinator, Imran Masood, a former SP leader, said: “SP has used Muslims only as a vote bank. Muslims and Dalits would go and others would follow. You will see the results of this.”

A look at the figures from the last UP election shows why the BSP is moving away from its 2007 social engineering formula and opting again for the Dalit-Muslim equation.

In the 2007 Assembly polls, when the BSP had formed its UP majority government based on the Dalit-Brahmin mix, it won 206 seats out of the state’s total 403 seats, securing 30 percent of the vote. The party lost the 2012 polls, winning only 80 seats, and its share of the vote fell to 26 percent. In 2017, the party’s tally dropped to just 19 and it garnered 22 percent of the vote.

In the 2022 Assembly polls, the BSP posted its worst ever performance, with its tally falling to just one seat and its share of the vote falling to 12.88 percent. This massive decline in their vote share appears to have forced the party to change its strategy, as it now tries to carve out a Dalit-Muslim equation, branding both communities “repressed” and vowing to elevate them if they vote for power.