Maya to meet party MPs, MLAs for ’17 poll plan

LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati will begin her organisational review from Monday in what is being seen as her first step to go into poll mode for UP assembly elections due in 2017. Party sources said Mayawati has called all her party’s MPs, MLAs, zonal and district coordinators for a series of meetings in Lucknow to assess the ground level situation of her party preparedness for the crucial assembly elections.
“All key party functionaries, including MPs, MLAs and coordinators have been called in by the party chief and she is expected give further instructions to them,” confirmed BSP national general secretary, Swami Prasad Maurya.
The otherwise closed-door meetings of Maya and her cadres come days ahead of the dalit leader’s birthday on January 15 which she has been choosing as an occasion to kick off her party campaign for elections. A senior party functionary said the BSP chief may seek feedback from her zonal coordinators about the candidates which are currently being projected from various assembly constituencies for 2017 UP assembly elections.
Party sources said the inputs from BSP’s powerful zonal coordinators happen to be key before the candidates are actually finalised and make it to the list that Maya officially announces just before the parliamentary/assembly elections. The zonal coordinators, this time too, would be interacting with party chief on different days and giving key inputs about the ground level situation—ostensibly party’s preparedness at the sector and booth level. The sector and booth level committees, acclaimed as BSP’s core election machinery, are ostensibly structured on the basis of percentage of voters’ caste and religion.
Maya’s meeting with her party cadres have often stoked speculations of candidates “buying'' tickets. The BSP chief, during the Lok Sabha elections, had faced nasty allegations from her own party leaders—like former BSP national general secretary Akhilesh Das, her current party MP Jugal Kishore and BSP’s former minister Daddu Prasad—of selling party tickets. Party leaders, however, dismiss this charge and maintain that the BSP goes by a thumb rule of proportionate representation of candidates of various castes and religions.
Mayawati senses BSP’s resurrection following recent UP panchayat polls in which her party posted a significant come back. The defeat of BJP in Bihar assembly elections have further boosted the morale of Maya who was otherwise decimated convincingly at the hands of saffron brigade during 2014 parliamentary elections.