Samajwadi Party goes all out to woo non-Jatav Dalits

Lucknow, Oct 25 (IANS) The Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh is going all out to woo Dalits in the Assembly elections due early next year.

The party has chosen Mithai Lal Bharti, who spent 29 years in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) before he quit two years ago, to head the Samajwadi Babasaheb Ambedkar Vahini.

The SP now has a dedicated wing for Scheduled Castes.

Mithai Lal Bharti is counted among the prominent Dalit leaders, particularly in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

While in the BSP, Bharti was in charge of many states. He was the party's zonal coordinator of Purvanchal and has enough experience in running the organization.

The Samajwadi Party, according to sources, now intends to focus on the Babasaheb Ambedkar Vahini that was formed in April 2021.

The party is looking towards non-Jatav Dalits, who are disillusioned with the BSP and its Jatav-centric politics.

"Non-Jatav leaders are being humiliated in the BSP. The party expelled stalwarts like Lalji Varma and Ram Achal Rajbhar. When former BSP Speaker Sukhdev Rajbhar died recently, Mayawati did not even bother to visit his residence and pay tributes to the departed leader. Even Satish Chandra Mishra did not extend the courtesy. In such a situation, people are getting increasingly disillusioned with the BSP and are heading towards the SP," said a senior SP leader.

The Dalit vote bank in Uttar Pradesh is believed to be around 22 to 23 per cent in which the number of Jatavs is nearly 12 per cent. The Jatav voters continue to back the BSP but other Dalit castes are distancing themselves from the party.

"We have to take the ideologies of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar and Ram Manohar Lohia along. We have to make the deprived and oppressed sections aware of the ideologies of both leaders and their contribution to society," said Bharti.