http://www.indianexpress.com/story/222926.html
Dalit+OBC is Maya's formula for Chhattisgarh Nitin Mahajan Posted online: Monday, October 01, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST RAIPUR, SEPTEMBER 30 After successfully wooing Brahmins in Uttar Pradesh, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Chhattisgarh has decided to engineer a social pact with OBCs and Scheduled Castes to make inroads into the state polity. The state unit of the BSP is preparing to replicate Uttar Pradesh's social engineering experiment in the 2008 Assembly polls through an alliance with SCs and OBCs. Chhattisgarh BSP President Dau Ram Ratnakar said the party was confident that the alliance would succeed. The party has decided to contest all 90 Assembly seats in next year's polls, he said. "As OBCs are a majority in the state, comprising mostly Sahus and Kurmis, an alliance of Dalits and OBCs will be an advantage for us in next year's Assembly polls," Ratnakar added. With the total population comprising 52 per cent OBCs and 22.3 per cent SCs, the party is hopeful that the alliance will be invincible. "To bring OBCs into the party fold, bhaichara committees have been launched by the BSP in each of the parliamentary constituencies. The committees have been entrusted with the task of organising constituency-level contact programmes for these communities," he said. In the last Chhattisgarh Assembly polls held in 2003, the party had contested 52 seats out of which it secured 2. However, polling on one of these seats — Malkharauda — was annulled by the High Court and a bypoll held for the seat was won by the BJP. The BSP in the last Assembly elections had secured a total vote share of 5 per cent by contesting on 52 seats. The party hopes to improve the vote share significantly once the alliance of the two castes is established. Party sources pointed out that upper castes only constitute about 4 per cent of the total population here, but the state has always been governed by them. Once an alliance between OBCs and Dalits is achieved, along with some upper caste leaders coming into the party fold, the state BSP hopes to make significant gains in next year's Assembly polls. As part of the party's strategy to woo the community, several OBC ministers from Uttar Pradesh will address mass rallies in various parts of the state. Also, the charge of Chhattisgarh has been handed over by the national leadership over to OBC leader Sewak Ram Sahu to prepare for next year's Assembly polls. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
