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Diminishing return from Brahmin voters

Lucknow: The results of the UP assembly polls clearly indicate that the BSP’s much hyped Dalit-Brahmin alliance formula frayed at the edges. With the social engineering formula losing its impact, the BSP supremo seems to be disillusioned with the Brahmin factor. The speculations in this regard started gaining momentum when the name of party general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra appeared to be missing from the list of star campaigners of BSP for Azamgarh by-election.

It is a well known fact that in the year 2007, the BSP had devised the winning formula by joining Dalit and Brahmin voters together.

Then BSP was successful in getting power in UP by winning 206 assembly seats with thirty percent vote share. Then the party fielded a record 86 Brahmin candidates of which 40 won. However, in the elections that followed, the graph of Mayawati’s party’s electoral performance continued to decline. To overcome the setbacks, in 2022 elections, the BSP once again tried to repeat the same old experiment of social engineering. Last year, the party launched a campaign for “Prabuddh Samaaj Goshthi”—or the Enlightened Class Conferences to woo Brahmins. Satish Mishra was entrusted with the task of recreating Dalit-Brahmin chemistry. His wife Kalpana Mishra and son Kapil Mishra were also seen trying to support him. His son-inlaw Paresh Mishra took over the responsibility of establishing the party’s roots through social media campaigns. Former cabinet minister Nakul had accompanied him in this campaign. However, all their efforts were in vain. Not only did the party’s vote share fall to 12.8 per cent, it could get only one assembly seat. The BSP had fielded 65 Brahmin candidates; but none could win. Mayawati expelled Nakul Dubey from the party. According to sources, this was an indirect expression of displeasure of Mayawati towards Satish Mishra. Later, the displeasure flared up with Dubey joining the Congress. Now, the political corridors are abuzz with the absence of lawyer turned-politician Satish Mishra’s name on the list of 40 star campaigners announced for the by-polls.

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