AZAMGARH, SEPT 29: In the political melting pot of Uttar Pradesh, a leopard is changing its spots. As the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) sheds its anti-Manuwadi image with 10 upper-caste candidates, political pundits are now forced to review their predictions.The BSP's UP boss, Mayawati, at present on a whirlwind tour of the turbulent eastern belt of the state, is not the least apologetic about changing the character of the outfit of the oppressed. She now says, almost casually, that their aim has shifted from running a limited `Bahujan Samaj' party to an all-encompassing `Sarv Samaj' one.This is Mayawati's message, loud and clear, to the Dalit masses who, during the past two days, have been flocking to listen to her at Chandra Shekhar's bastion Ballia, at Ghosi where the late Kalpnath Rai's wife and son have just begun an internecine fight to the finish, at Akbar Ahmed Dumpy's hometurf Azamgarh and in the upper-caste-dominated constituencies of Lalganj and Ghazipur. At each public meeting, she makes it apoint to explain why these 10 candidates were chosen over Dalit aspirants in the first place.The 10 are: Jaibhadra Singh (for Sultanpur constituency), Thakur Sunder Singh Rankwar (Kesarganj), Ayodhya Naresh Pandey (Gonda), Rajesh Kumar Sainthwar (Dewaria), Rajendra Tripathy (Mirzapur-Bhadoi), Ashok Chandel (Hamirpur), Ramvir Upadhyay (Jalesar), Kamal Kant Upmanyu (Mathura) and two for the Uttarakhand region, Rajeev Rawat (Tehri Garhwal) and Chandrashekhar Benjwal (Garhwal). ``These are our winning candidates. We have selected them carefully,'' she tells The Indian Express matter-of-factly.In most places, the response to Mayawati's rallies is overwhelming. At Mehnagar, a typical Dalit zone in the Lalganj constituency bordering Azamgarh, for instance, the crowds came in droves. Men, women and children, they arrived in tractor-trolleys, jeeps and cycles. Everywhere, it was Mayawati's show all the way.As the campaigning in eastern UP approaching an end, it's becoming increasingly clear that bothMayawati and her bete noire, Samajwadi Party's Mulayam Singh Yadav, share a common worry: how to keep their Muslim flock together. Or more pertinently, how to prevent the Congress - now on an upswing in the state - from poaching into their Muslim vote bank.It's perhaps keeping this in mind that in every meeting Mayawati insistently announces generous welfare and reservation schemes for the ``oppressed Muslims'' in the event of the BSP managing some sort of control over levers of power in the post-election phase. Mayawati's immediate aim is modest: Her party does not want the entire cake. ``We are looking for 55 seats. This should be sufficient for us to have a say in the matters and sway things our way in Parliament. This is what we are looking for at the moment,'' she says.`Behenji' breathes and speaks caste. The relevant numbers are on her fingertips. Listen to her at the Azamgarh ground: ``Who cares for Muslims more than us? We have fielded 17 of them in this election.'' At Mau (Ghosi), she takes adig at Mulayam: ``This time, we have chosen eight Yadav candidates, more than what the SP has done.'' And finally, she argues at Ghazipur: ``Doesn't all this show that we have respect for for all communities - even for the upper caste ones? Doesn't this makes BSP a `Sarv Samaj' party?''.
