In yet another attempt to connect Dalits with his party’s Yadav and Muslim vote base, Akhilesh Yadav has hit upon the idea of taking the fight straight to the Bahujan Samaj Party’s home ground — with plans to celebrate BSP founder Kanshi Ram’s birth anniversary on a large scale.
For this, the Samajwadi Party president has directed his party leaders to celebrate the BSP founder’s birth anniversary on March 15 as “Bahujan Samaj Diwas or PDA (Pichhda, Dalit and Alpsankhyak) Diwas” at all the district headquarters across Uttar Pradesh.
Even as the SP in the past few years started organising programmes to pay tributes to Kanshi Ram on his birth and death anniversaries, these events were limited largely to the party’s state headquarters only.
During the March 15 programmes, the party leaders will not only pay tributes to Kanshi Ram but also discuss the past events when the BSP founder and SP’s late patriarch and former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had joined hands to form a coalition government.
Following the SP chief’s directive, party state unit president Shyamlal Pal on Tuesday issued instructions regarding these programmes to all the district presidents, MPs, MLAs, former MPs and MLAs, all the other elected public representatives and the national office-bearers of the party.
Also, the party wants to ensure that these events are not confined to the assembly constituencies of SP leaders for photo opportunities and that members of the general public from PDA (backward, Dalit and Muslims) sections should be present there.
In a message to party leaders regarding the March 15 programme, the SP leadership has said that Kanshi Ram dedicated his entire life to convert Bahujan Samaj to a “ruling community” (shashan-karta) and he created a nation-wide movement in the support of the Mandal Commission report.
“He (Kanshi Ram) joined hands with great socialist leader Mulayam Singh Yadav in December 1992 and gave momentum to the ‘Bahujan Samaj Banao Abhiyan’. He helped form a government of oppressed sections under the leadership of Netaji (Mulayam) in December 1993,” Shyamlal Pal said in the message.
He added that Kanshi Ram dedicated his birth anniversary for the unity and bonhomie among Dalits, backwards, tribals, religious minorities and other weaker sections of the society.
“That is called Bahujan Samaj Diwas or PDA Diwas,” he further said.
The SP in the message added the party under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav was working to unite people divided into 6,000 castes.
“Understanding their importance, everyone must contribute by all means to make these programmes a success,” the message reads.
Talking to The Indian Express, SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said, “The programmes will be held at a grand scale this time with an idea to bring the Bahujan Samaj into the mainstream under the PDA umbrella. In the March 15 programmes, people from Bahujan Samaj, OBCs and minorities will be present.”
“Akhilesh Yadav ji wants to establish a rule of social justice. This programme is being organised with that agenda,” Chaudhary added, pointing out that Kanshi Ram won his first Lok Sabha election in 1991 from Etawah, the Yadav family’s home turf.
Besides discussing the personal equation between Kanshi Ram with Mulayam Singh Yadav,
stress will also be given on developing a similar social bonhomie between Dalits and OBCs to establish the rule of social justice in Uttar Pradesh after the 2027 Assembly elections, said another leader.
In 2023, Akhilesh had unveiled a statue of the BSP founder in Raebareli, claiming that the “Samajwadi movement” launched by Mulayam Singh and the path shown by socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia was the same as the one started by B R Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram.
Kanshi Ram clinched his first Lok Sabha election victory from Etawah in 1991 with Mulayam’s help. As a payback, the BSP did not field its candidate against Mulayam from the Jaswantnagar Assembly seat that year. Also, the two parties joined hands during the UP Assembly polls in 1993. With Dalit and OBC voters supporting the coalition, the two parties got the better of the BJP in a hung Assembly, although the latter emerged as the single largest party with 177 seats. With the Congress and other parties extending their support to the SP-BSP alliance, Mulayam Singh was sworn in as the CM in December 1993.