BJP chief woos Dalits at Indore meet

In a bid to revive the party’s shattered image after the drubbing in the Lok Sabha elections and wrangling among the top leadership, the BJP is holding a meeting at Indore from Feb 17. The party realizes that while it has not been able to hold on to the urban voters and middle class, it has not been able to convince the Dalits and Muslims of its credibility.

On Wednesday, the newly elected BJP president Nitin Gadkari reached out to the Dalits, who form an important part of vote bank in Uttar Pradesh, the largest State in the country sending the maximum number of MPs to Parliament.

Gadkari said untouchability was part of the Bharatiya Janata Party's "political commitment", indicating a significant shift in strategy for the party by bringing in the issue of Dalit welfare in the party's agenda. He was addressing the inaugural session of the party’s BJP's national executive meeting: Several party leaders who attended the session were of the view that this was an indication that the BJP was no longer content to be tagged as a party of middle class urban voters.

"We need to expand our base. Dalits are an important constituency and a neglected one too. No national party has taken up their cause in big way on sustained basis. We are going to do that in days to come," a senior BJP leader who attended the inaugural session said. It was emphasised that the focus on Dalit issues was not for electoral gains. In what was seen as a clear political strategy to woo Dalits, Gadkari compared Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar with Martin Luther King Junior. Both, he said, fought for the rights of the downtrodden. Ambedkar played an instrumental role in bringing social justice to Dalits, Gadkari added.

But the BJP chief did not forget to mention the issue of holding talks with Pakistan. "There is a need to rise above the vote bank politics to tackle terrorism in the country," he said, criticising the Union government for going ahead with talks with Pakistan. "These talks are being conducted under the pressure of the US," he charged. "National security is a cause of concern."

Prominent BJP leaders who attended the inaugural session at the sprawling tent city of Kushabhau Thackre Nagar, 10 km away from Indore city, included former Deputy prime minister LK Advani, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, BJP chief ministers from Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh and former party chief Murli Manohar Joshi.

- Asian Tribune -