Before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, in a bid to reach out to Dalits, BJP is preparing to hold six Dalit conferences in UP. Among these, a big Dalit conference will be held in Lucknow on November 2nd. Before this, the Dalit conference of West UP will be held on 15th October and the conference of Kashi region will be held on 27th October.
In these conferences, BJP has set the target of inviting Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP National President JP Nadda and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh. On Friday, BJP State President Bhupendra Chaudhary decided on the blueprint for these conferences in Aligarh and Organization General Secretary Dharampal in Kanpur.
BJP has kept the first focus of Dalit conferences on intellectuals. BJP has asked all its workers to contact at least 5 intelligentsia from the Dalit community at every booth. These include doctors, engineers, advocates, CAs and teachers. Awadh region and Scheduled Front have formed their team for the conference to be held in Lucknow.
About 17 Lok Sabha seats are reserved in UP. Of these, Nagina and Lalganj are with BSP. Bulandshahr, Hathras, Agra, Shahjahanpur, Hardoi, Misrikh, Mohanlalganj, Etawah, Jalaun, Kaushambi, Barabanki, Bahraich, Basgaon, Machlishahr and Robertsganj are with the BJP alliance.
At the same time, in the Assembly elections 2022, the BJP alliance had fielded 86 Scheduled Caste candidates. In this way, Dalits were given a chance on more seats than reserved. Of these, 63 candidates won the elections. BJP believes that the target of winning all 80 seats in the Lok Sabha elections cannot be achieved without getting 50 per cent votes of the Dalit class.
Dalits, who were the core vote bank of BSP in the last few elections, are now becoming disillusioned. Now every party wants to break into this Dalit vote bank. Congress is also going to start Dalit Gaurav Samvad on 9th October, the death anniversary of BSP founder Kanshi Ram.
Congress is also going to set up Dalit Chaupal. Now BJP has also focused on connecting Dalits. In fact, BSP’s support base has been continuously decreasing since 2012. In the 2012 assembly elections, BSP got 25.95 per cent votes.