Mayawati retractors to hold convention with Kanshi Ram’s sister on March 22

“What Mayawati has done by changing Bahujan Hitay into Sarvajan Hitay is removal of the movement’s core principle. It is a crime. We don’t have any other party; we are part of the BSP. We don’t accept Mayawati as the chief of BSP. It is because of her that the party has reached this stage,” Kureel said.

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A Dalit hailing from Rae Bareli, Kureel was nominated to Rajya Sabha in 2010 in a by-election, and his term ended in 2012. He started a campaign — Mayawati Hatao-BSP Bachao — in 2012, with a few leaders who worked in BSP with Kanshi Ram but had been ousted by Mayawati.

Kureel said Kaur has been associated with his campaign for the last one-and-a-half year and she herself wanted to address a convention where she wants to narrate the wrongs done to Kanshi Ram by Mayawati.

He said after Agra, similar conventions will be held in Saharanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Allahabad and other parts of the state. “Since the Lok Sabha elections last year, we have been in touch with those opposed to Mayawati. At our Agra convention, there will be several former ministers and MPs of the party.”

Dinesh Kumar Gautam, a former BSP leader from Agra, who is organising the convention, said they had held a similar programme in Madurai in December last year but this is the first such convention in UP.

Last month, a similar campaign, which aims to replace Mayawati’s Sarvajan Hitay with Kanshi Ram’s Bahujan Hitay policy, had been launched by expelled BSP leader Daddu Prasad from Bundelkhand. The campaigns come at a time when BSP has seen nearly a dozen upper- and mid-level functionaries part ways after the party’s rout in the Lok Sabha polls.

BSP’s Agra division coordinator Hemendra Maurya, however, said the people organising the convention are themselves fighting for their existence and have no public following.