New Delhi

Disgruntled BSP leaders lend support to Congress

NEW DELHI: Nearly two dozen office-bearers of Bahujan Samaj Party led by former Delhi unit president Jage Ram Bhati came before the media at Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s residence here on Wednesday and declared their support to the Congress ahead of the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections.

Till the last moment the reason for the press conference had not been mentioned and it was only when the BSP leaders drove in that it became apparent. The presence of Delhi’s Development Minister Raj Kumar Chauhan, East Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit and MLA Rajesh Lilothia during the conference showed that they had worked on the deal. Introducing five prominent local BSP leaders Ms. Dikshit said a couple of days ago they, along with thousands of workers, had resigned from the BSP. She said the Congress would take them into its fold soon.

Explaining the reason for supporting the Congress now, Mr. Bhati said the BSP leaders who had laid the foundation of the party in Delhi were now feeling slighted and ignored. “I had even complained to national president Mayawati that party tickets for Delhi elections were not being given to the cadre but were instead being sold to outsiders,” he said, adding that rather than rectifying the situation she only asked them not to raise the issue in public. Mr. Bhati, who had left the Congress only four years ago, charged that the BSP had deviated from its ideology and fallen into the hands of middlemen now.

The BSP leader in charge of North-West Delhi, Ashwani Bhargava, said people had gone to the BSP as they were told it was a party of the Dalits and the poor. But now, he claimed, he had realised that the party was only out to cheat the Dalits as “it was running like an agency of businessmen”. In North-West Delhi, he said, the cadre had worked hard over the years and this had resulted in eight BSP candidates becoming councillors in the MCD elections and six occupying the second spot. But in the distribution of tickets for the Assembly elections, the area leaders were completely overlooked. Stating that the Delhi leaders had even urged that if 60 of the tickets were being “sold”, at least 10 should be kept for serious candidates who could win the polls, he quipped that even this demand was not met. Claiming the support of four of the councillors, Mr. Bhargava said many BSP workers were coming out to support the Congress as they did not want the rise of the BJP, something which the BSP leadership is itself promoting.

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