By having an SC candidate, BJP hopes to gain substantially in 2020 polls.
New Delhi: Whether to go for a leader from the Scheduled Caste community (SC) or someone from the forward castes is the dilemma that is stopping the Bharatiya Janata Party from appointing its next state president in Bihar, which goes to the polls next year.
Party sources said that the national leadership has not been able to make up its mind yet, but a decision is expected within the next few days. In view of an imminent announcement, a few Bihar based hopefuls are camping in Delhi for the last two weeks and have met the top brass. Party sources also said that there was consensus among a section of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that appointing someone from the SC community will pay the party handsome dividends in the long run in Bihar.
“Even Nitish Kumar, who is a Kurmi (OBC), rose to great heights because he got the support of the SCs. If the BJP has to expand in Bihar, where it has been depended on the JDU and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) to survive, we need to promote a leader from the SC community as we have so far not been able to gain their trust completely. Earlier, they saw Lalu Yadav as their representative and now they see Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan as their voices. Unless we gain the trust of the SC, we will continue to depend on the JDU and LJP in the state,” an RSS functionary, who has spent a considerable time in the state, told The Sunday Guardian. As per the 2011 census, of the 10.5 crore population of Bihar, 1.65 crore are from the SC community, thereby constituting roughly 16% of the population. The present Bihar BJP president Nityanand Rai, a Yadav, who was appointed on the said post in December 2016, has joined the Union Cabinet as Minister of State, Home.
Another RSS leader gave the example of how Nitish Kumar, after resigning from the CM’s post and claiming responsibility for the party’s poor performance in the 2014 general elections, appointed Jitan Ram Manjhi, an unknown SC leader, as the CM.
“By appointing someone from the SC community, Nitish Kumar showed his political acumen. He was thus able to give a message to the community that he was their leader and cared for them. The BJP has so far shown no such outreach towards the SCs,” argued a BJP party functionary.
Of the six Lok Sabha members from Bihar, who are a part of the Union Cabinet, no one is from the SC community, an “imbalance” which has not gone unnoticed in Bihar.
“There isn’t a single face from our community in BJP. The party needs to strike a balance between the aspirations of forward castes and the SCs. The leadership needs to ask themselves what they are doing to get the SCs into BJP fold,” a Patna based leader from the SC community said.
In the present Cabinet, there are five BJP Lok Sabha MPs from Bihar: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Giriraj Singh, R.K. Singh, Ashwini Choubey and Nityanand Rai. Apart from Nityanand Rai who is an OBC, all are from the forward castes. In the Modi-1 Cabinet too, there was no SC MP from Bihar.