http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?category=National&id=100684
Punjab polls: Mayawati woos upper castes Sandeep Bhushan Saturday, February 10, 2007: Over the past few days, Punjab has been witness to a star campaigner - BSP Chief Mayawati. She hopes to make inroads into a state where 30 per cent of the population is Dalit. But in an effort to make the BSP more broad based and representative, the party has doled out more tickets to upper caste candidates. It's Mayawati's first crucial elections in the post Kanshi Ram period and its very much her own innovation. "In Uttar Pradesh my government really worked for the Dalits and the minorities," said Mayawati. Non-Dalits Uttar Pradesh is uppermost on the BSP chiefs mind. Just days before Punjab goes to polls, most of her speeches in the 20 rallies across Punjab are about her achievements in Uttar Pradesh as chief minister. For the first time, Mayawati has given nearly half the tickets to non-Dalits - clearly a bid to widen the party's base. "We will not only give tickets to upper castes in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, we will also make them ministers," said Mayawati. Turn around bid Dalits comprise nearly 30 percent of the population in Punjab, the largest concentration in the country. However, only four per cent voted for the BSP in the last assembly elections and the party failed to open its account even in the last Lok Sabha elections. In Mayawati's turn around bid, of the 117 seats, upper castes have got tickets to 41, 24 of these to Jat Sikhs alone. Jaswant Singh, a Jat Sikh farmer and an Akali Dal supporter contesting on a BSP ticket from Qila Raipur just outside Ludhiana, is one of the beneficiaries of Mayawati's new strategy. "Jat Sikhs are with the BSP this time. They have got fair share of tickets this time," said Singh. The BSP has done well wherever it has tied up with the Akalis but its fight is with the Congress, which has the bulk of the Dalit vote bank. The party is short on resources but the bigger problem is social tensions between the landed Jat Sikh farmer and the Dalits most of whom are landless.
