With eye on 2019, Mayawati to woo youth, ‘Sarvjan’

Lucknow: After a brief period when she underlined the need for focusing on dalits alone, Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati has again decided to work on the “Sarvjan” concept and adopt an inclusive caste approach.

Elevated over the party’s victory in the municipal elections, Ms Mayawati has dissolved all booth level committees and the “bhaichara” committees. She has asked party coordinators to reconstitute the both committee and increase the number of members to 20 each.

The party president apparently wants to include non-dalits in these committees so that the party can shed its “dalit only” tag for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and reach out to other castes.

It may be recalled that after the BSP’s dismal performance in last year’s Assembly polls where the party won only 19 seats in the House of 403, Ms Mayawati had decided to work judiciously on bringing back dalit voters into the party fold. However, she has now changed her mind and is back to the “Sarvjan Hitaye, Sarvjan Sukhaye” concept

To break the inertia in the party ranks, Ms Mayawati has asked her leaders to identify BSP loyalists who have turned inactive. “The leaders who remain loyal to the party but have become inactive, will now be given major responsibilities in order to make them feel wanted,” said a BSP functionary.

In another significant move, the BSP president has asked party coordinators to include maximum number of youth leaders in the organisation.

The BSP, in recent years, has failed to recognise the generational shift in dalit voters and has not addressed the young voter which has led to the depletion in its popularity. The new generation of Dalit voters, in particular, do not share the loyalty that their elders had for the BSP and most of them gravitated towards the BJP.