Seat sharing: Resentment brews among BSP workers

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 12

The alliance formed between the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal for the 2022 Assembly election may have cheered some party workers, there are others, especially within the BSP, who are not happy with the seat-sharing method.

Even though the BSP and SAD workers held symbolic celebrations at their respective offices across the city, there are many within the BSP who feel that at least half of the 20 seats allotted to the party in the alliance, including Sujjanpur, Bhoa, Pathankot, Jalandhar North, Dasuya, Tanda, Amritsar Central and North, Payal and Ludhiana North, are those where it does not have a good hold. They say this leaves the party with only half of the winnable seats.

The BSP workers said these were primarily those seats which were contested by the BJP when SAD was in alliance with it and the Akali Dal leaders in a very smart move had passed on the onus to win these seats to the BSP. In many of these seats such as Amritsar Central, the BSP had got only 500 votes in the 2017 Assembly polls. BSP’s Chain Singh had polled only 695 votes from the Bhoa seat in the last election.

The party leaders feel that the seats where BSP had a stronger base, such as in Phillaur, Banga, Adampur, Sham Churasi, Garhshankar and Chabbewal, had been very smartly retained by the SAD, which would try to use the party’s support to gain more strength. The BSP, however, hopes to make good use of its own strength in seats like Kartarpur, Phagwara, Mehal Kalan, Chamkaur Sahib, Bassi Pathana and Nawanshahr where it has had a good vote-share in the past. In seats like Jalandhar West and Hoshiarpur, the alliance has winnability chances only if it gives good candidates, the political experts of Doaba opine.

Thekedar Bhagwan Dass, who had contested the last Phagwara bypoll on the BSP ticket, says, “From the seat allotment, it seems that the SAD leadership has prevailed upon the BSP leaders during the discussions and they have taken all seats of their choice. It seems that the SAD will benefit more from the alliance than the BSP.”

It also remains to be seen if the sitting SAD MLAs like Pawan Tinu, Baldev Khaira and Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi, who had all moved to Akali Dal after parting ways with the BSP, will get any support from the BSP’s committed voters in the alliance.

MP Chaudhary terms it opportunistic

Terming the new alliance between the Shiromani Akali Dal and Bahujan Samaj Party as the most opportunistic, Member of Parliament Santokh Singh Chaudhary on Saturday said that BSP chief Mayawati had again betrayed the Dalit community for its own survival by entering into a coalition with an anti-Dalit party like Akali Dal.