NEW DELHI, 19 November 2007 — Keen to emerge in Gujarat as “third alternative,” Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati is likely to campaign for eight days in the state going polls early December.
BSP leader Gandhi Azad, who is in charge of the party affairs in Gujarat, said Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati is serious about giving Congress party and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a good fight in the coming elections. She plans to campaign four days each in the two-phase election, scheduled for Dec. 11 and 16.
After having given political rivals a shock by gaining a sweeping majority in UP elections, Gujarat is BSP’s next target. “We have to capture Delhi (have Mayawati as the prime minister), we cannot take the challenge in Gandhi Nagar (Gujarat) lightly,” Azad, a member of the upper house, said.
Gujarat politics have till now been a two-party show, involving only the Congress and the BJP. With BSP making a decisive entry for the first time, by planning to contest all 182 seats, it is expected to at most cut into votes of Congress and BJP both, analysts say. However, Azad is hopeful of BSP faring much better than this. Citing the instance of UP, where BSP was earlier taken as a force of no consequence, Azad said: “In UP, we have proved that we are not in the business of mere cutting votes, but roots (of other political parties),” Azad said.
Azad said that the BSP plans to face all assembly and Lok Sabha (lower house) elections without an alliance with any political formation. “We want to spread the experiment from our UP laboratory to various states and Gujarat is the first election after we captured Lucknow under the leadership of Mayawati.” The BSP wants to see Mayawati as the next prime minister, on its own strength.
The strategy in distribution of tickets will be same as the one used in UP, with ability to win being the main criteria, Azad said. The candidates will be a mix of upper castes, Dalits, backwards and minorities, he said.
Meanwhile, with the Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi hopes to emerge victorious in Gujarat by fighting for secularism. Highlighting this, in the latest issue of party magazine, “Congress Sandesh,” Sonia said: “One of the main principles of the Congress has been its commitment to secularism. This is particularly important in Gujarat where communal politics has polarized society and undermined the pluralist and tolerant ethos of our nation.”
Lashing at the BJP government in Gujarat for shattering ethos of “inclusive nationalism” in the state, the editorial of the party mouthpiece said: “The recent exposure of the brutal manner in which the minority community was targeted in Gujarat is shocking and must be condemned by all Indians. Such acts are not Hinduism. They are instead the negation of a great and peace loving faith.”
The Congress, having failed in UP, does not intend to repeat the experiment of facing Gujarat elections alone. Rather, as indicated by party sources, the party plans to give tickets to BJP rebels and also align with several other parties, including Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal.
