For Capital gains, BSP works UP formula

With a little more than month to go for the assembly elections the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party, which is in power in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh is keen on make an impression in the Capital, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 25, 2008, 24:53:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With a little more than month to go for the assembly elections, the national parties are getting the elections ‘blues’. The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party, which is in power in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, is keen on make an impression in the Capital.

And, the Congress has reasons to be concerned as the BSP is painting its bastions blue—the party colour. Take North and West Delhi. The BSP candidates are focusing on slums and unauthorised areas and it seems to be working.

When the party decided on Puran Mal Goel’s a month ago, within weeks, most parts of Shakur Basti got handpumps. He calls it “social service”, but every handpump bears the party symbol: the elephant.

In the west, water tankers ensure 24-hour supply. “Call it an election gimmick, but one cannot ignore the fact that it has helped the people,” said a resident. In areas where water is not an issue, the party is distributing food packets twice a day.

Eastern Delhi is crucial. Of the 70 members in the Delhi assembly, 16 come from these parts. The party is building on the gains it made in the civic polls — it had won 10 of the 17 seats.

Add to it the party’s social engineering formula. It has chosen candidates from influential groups including the dominant Punjabi and Vaish communities. “We’ve named candidates on their win-ability,” general secretary Suraj Mohan Arya said.

That the BSP is replicating its UP formula is obvious. Majority of the candidates in the state were either upper caste Hindus or moneyed Muslims. Elections, a senior party leader who didn’t wish to be named told HT, “can’t be contested without money. The rich must vote for us. Only then will we be a formidable force”.

The mood in the BSP camp is upbeat. They are talking about “springing surprises” and promise what its candidate and former BJP minister Rajendra Kumar Gupta calls “an emergence of a new political force in Delhi”.

Banking on the “persona and grit” of Mayawati, the party will contest all 70 seats. The electorate, however, has a different view: The party has pockets of influence, but “Abhi Dilli door hai…”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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