AAP and BSP to hold rally in Punjab today

Punjab will witness rallies of two political parties on 15 March, the birth anniversary of Dalit leader Kanshi Ram. While one rally will be addressed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal who is looking at expanding his party’s base in the state, the other will be addressed by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati to revive her party in Punjab.

In an attempt to woo the numerically strong Dalits, who constitute 32% of the state’s population as per Census 2011, Kejriwal is set to hold a rally in Kanshi Ram’s ancestral village in Ropar district, even as Mayawati will not be far away in Nawanshahr district.

BSP founder Kanshi Ram, born in Pirthipur Bunga village, was known for his work for the upliftment of the backward classes.

Kejriwal will also visit the family of Kanshi Ram, as he has been invited by members of the village, including Kanshi Ram’s sister. This will be the CM’s third trip to Punjab this year and the second in the last fortnight. He had travelled to the state last month to reach out to voters, including farmers and the business community. He officially launched AAP’s election campaign from Muktsar in January.

Unlike Kejriwal, this is the first time after the 2014 general elections that Mayawati will be visiting the poll-bound state, though the party had officially launched its election campaign in the state on 15 January—on the occasion of Mayawati’s birthday—by holding rallies in all 22 districts. While the party’s state unit chief, Avtar Singh Karimpuri, addressed rallies in Hoshiarpur, its state in-charge Narendra Kumar Kashyap addressed in Nawanshahr.

“The Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance has been ruling the state for nine years now and the anti-incumbency sentiment is very high. People in the state are looking for an alternative and due to our ground work, we are being seen as that alternative,” said Kashyap.

However, the BSP does not have a good electoral record in Punjab. In the 2012 assembly polls, the party could not win a single seat out of the 117 seats it had contested; in 2002 and 2007 too, the party drew a blank. This is in contrast to AAP which won four seats in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.

Kashyap, however, does not see a threat in AAP holding a rally on the same day.

“We do not see AAP as a threat at all. Their ideology is very different from ours and this sudden attempt to woo Dalits by using Kanshi Ram’s name has only turned people against the party,” he said.

However, analysts say that even though Ropar and Nawanshahr form a major chunk of BSP’s support base in the state, AAP appears to be a more winnable party.

“BSP gets about 20% of its votes from Ropar and Nawanshahr, even though overall the party’s vote share in the state is only around 5%. But the party does not stand a chance of winning on its own, unless it forms an alliance, so people may consider voting for a party which has better chances and AAP might just be the answer,” said Ashutosh Kumar, who teaches political science at Punjab University.