Bahujan Samaj Party not to field upper caste candidates
PTI
MUMBAI, January 4: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will contest 85 seats in Uttar Pradesh and an equal number in the rest of the country, but will not field any upper caste candidate in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, the party's president Kanshi Ram has said."Our past experiments in fielding upper caste candidates in elections have failed because 10 such BSP MLAs had recently crossed over to the BJP," Kanshi Ram told reporters soon after he arrived here from Gujarat. In the ensuing polls, the United Front (UF) will disintegrate and a new front comprising BSP and like-minded parties will emerge as a force to reckon with, he claimed adding the new party and Congress could form a government at the Centre. A meeting of political leaders including Devi Lal, Om Prakash Chauthala, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Shankersinh Vaghela, Ramakrishna Hegde would be held in New Delhi on Monday to work out the modalities of the proposed new front. The new front would back the Congress and arrive at a seat-sharing arrangement all
over the country. Its main aim would be to prevent the BJP from coming to power. Asked if BSP had reached an electoral understanding with Congress, he said, both parties had agreed on a pact in Punjab and talks were still going on with Sitaram Kesri and Arjun Singh for an electoral alliance in the rest of the country. Kanshi Ram said BSP would give a befitting reply to the BJP in Uttar Pradesh adding that of the 11 BSP MPs, only eight would be fielded again from their respective constituencies. BSP aims at capturing at least 10 per cent seats in the Lok Sabha, he added. He alleged BJP was a "party of criminals", but when asked whether there were any criminals in BSP he said his party would henceforth not allow such elements to enter the party fold. Describing elections as an "opportunity", he called upon the masses to grab it and bring about a qualitative change in the country's polity. Terming BJP and Congress "Brahmanwadi", he said, the "Bahujans" would eventually rule the country. In UP, Kanshi Ram
said, there were 78 backward castes. Till 1988, not a single backward caste candidate had been elected as an MLA. However, BSP had brought them together and today the party had 26 MLAs belonging to the backward castes, he added. The BSP president said if his party came to power in MP, it would make an adivasi as the chief minister, adding that in R.rajasthan, his party would prefer a candidate from the Gujjar community to rule the state.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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