Bahujan Samaj Party national general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra has alleged that Brahmins and Dalits are suffering under the current Yogi Adityanath government and said that they want the BSP to come back to power. The pro-Dalit party embarking on a ‘Brahmin Mission’ indicates the party’s attempt to retry their tried-and-tested formula of wooing the Brahmin-Dalit combo to win back power.
“Brahmins and Dalits are facing maximum issues. The way encounters and murders are happening… If someone complains, he faces inquiry. All these people who were suffering urged me to come out…,” Mishra said at the Idea Exchange of The Indian Express.
“They want 2007 to come back [the last time BSP came to power], they want the brotherhood of the Brahmin and Dalit communities to return. The social engineering… no one ever thought the communities could come together. We formed a majority government,” he added.
The remarks can be seen in reference to the encounter of notorious gangster Vikas Dubey near Kanpur in July last year. The BSP has taken up the case of Khushi Dubey – the widow of Vikas Dubey’s nephew Amar who was killed in a separate encounter – who is lodged in a juvenile centre in Barabanki and faces charges of murder and conspiracy.
The BSP, which has embarked on a ‘Brahmin Mission’ ahead of the 2022 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, has said that it will fight the case of Khushi, seeking bail for her. In fact Mishra has himself taken up the case.
The BSP, which has remained out of power in the state, had resorted to the social engineering formula of Brahmin-Dalit formula to win the polls in 2007. A dominant sentiment against the Samajwadi Party coupled with the Brahmin-Dalit coalition is said to have been the winning formula for the BSP back then.