BSP emptied by exodus begins search for ‘potential leaders’ in Uttar Pradesh

LUCKNOW: After facing mass exodus of leaders from the party in recent years, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati has now asked seniors to identify “potential” leaders from within the party to represent those castes. Talaash” where the party does not have primacy. Since 2016, the BSP has lost several second-line leaders and it has lost permanent leadership and representation to several caste groups such as the Pasi, Kurmi and Kushwaha-Maurya.

“We don’t think these leaders will come back or ‘behenji’ (Mayawati) will induct them again,” he said. The vacancies need to be filled from within the party. The partymen will now look for potential leaders at all levels. They will be groomed as leaders. The party may even import leaders from outside to bridge the gap,” said a BSP functionary.

Significantly, before the 2017 UP assembly elections, many big leaders were out of BSP. OBC leader Swami Prasad Maurya stepped down in June 2016. A month later, another stalwart RK Chowdhary made his exit. Chowdhary was a prominent Pasi leader. The Pasi community is the second largest SC community in UP and accounts for about 16 per cent after the Jatavs, who are said to constitute more than 50 per cent of the state’s total Dalit population. August 2017 saw the expulsion of another influential Pasi leader, Indrajit Saroj.

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These expulsions hurt the party’s voter base. This created panic among politicians and mistrust among voters. “We need active leaders to reach out to these Dalit and OBC communities to bring them back to us,” the office-bearer said. Unfortunately, those whom the BSP expelled were a strong second line of leaders. Moreover, some of these leaders have held important positions in other parties and have been instrumental in promoting ‘Dalit and OBC’ politics there.

Brijlal Khabri, who left the BSP in October 2016, is now heading the Congress in UP. Thakur Jaiveer Singh and SP Singh Baghel, who were earlier in the BSP, are now ministers in the BJP government. One of the main proponents of the BSP’s social engineering experiment in 2007, Brijesh Pathak is the Deputy Chief Minister in the BJP government.

“At least a dozen of our former leaders are in the Yogi government. In western UP, it has made a big difference to the party as many of these leaders made an impact in the region, like our former MP Narendra Kashyap, who joined the BJP,” said BSP sources. Moreover, BSP’s number two leader Satish Chandra Mishra has been mysteriously missing for the past several months and there has been no official statement regarding his current status in the party.

In this situation, the BSP is almost leaderless after Mayawati, who remains unavailable and inaccessible to party workers.