Mayawati's Ignorance of Bahujan Movement Led to Party's Rout In UP: BSP Founding Member

Lucknow: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has been ignoring the Bahujan movement which has led to her party's rout in the recent Lok Sabha elections, said a newly-elected Samajwadi Party (SP) MP, one of the founders of the BSP. 

Parliamentarian RK Chaudhary added that now SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is taking forward the Bahujan movement, demanding social equality for backward castes and disadvantaged communities, with the slogan of 'PDA' (backwards, Dalit and minority). 

Chaudhary, a four-time MLA and former state minister who is counted among Uttar Pradesh's prominent Dalit leaders, emphasised BSP's falling graph and what the future holds for the party founded by Kanshi Ram.

Elected MP from the Mohanlalganj seat on an SP ticket, Chaudhary said that the core Dalit politics in Uttar Pradesh has become leaderless at the moment, but in the coming times, the SP will carry forward the flame of Bahujanism awakened by Kanshi Ram.

When asked about the reasons for the BSP not being able to win even one seat in the recent Lok Sabha elections, Choudhary said, "Mayawati ji has been our leader. We respect her. But if anyone has ended Kanshi Ram ji's movement, it is Behen ji (Mayawati). Now, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has started walking on the path of taking that movement forward." 

Claiming that the SP a got considerable share of Dalit votes in the Lok Sabha elections, he said, "The SP this time got the core vote of the Bahujan Samaj Party without asking for it. Somewhere, it got 50 per cent and somewhere it got 60 per cent (of the Dalit votes). This is not an ordinary thing. And in the coming times, the Samajwadi Party, under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav, will definitely fulfil the dream that BSP founder Kanshi Ram ignited." 

The BSP, the party that ruled in Uttar Pradesh four times, couldn't secure a single seat in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. The vote share of the party also took a massive hit of more than 10 percentage points from the 2019 elections, when it had won 10 seats, to stand at 9.39 per cent.