Saharanpur clashes and April 2 violence alienated Dalits from BJP: MP Sanjeev Balyan

MEERUT: In the party’s first assessment meeting after losses in the Kairana and Noorpur byelections, Bharatiya Janata Party’s 70 MLAs and 13 MPs of west UP constituencies huddled together in Ghaziabad on Monday. While the BJP think-tank accepted the fact that the party could not electorally monetise a slew of schemes launched by central and state governments, Dalit alienation was also an issue.
Speaking to TOI, Muzaffarnagar MP Sanjeev Balyan, one of the coordinators for Kairana bypoll said, “Look at the track record and you will find that BJP was always a second choice for Dalits after Bahujan Samaj Party but this time, owing to Saharanpur Dalit clashes in 2017 and April 2 Bharat Bandh violence, Dalits got alienated and that is something that needs to be mended now.”
The meeting was attended by UP CM Yogi Adityanath apart from other senior leaders and presidents of 17 west UP district units of the party.
Bijnor MP Kunwar Bhartendra said, “Now the focus is on ensuring proper communication with every person on the ground in terms of apprising him of government schemes like Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana that aims at providing cooking gas cylinder to every home, and Ayushman Bharat Yojana or National Health Protection Scheme. These schemes need to reach the ground level so that people know what the party has done in bettering lives of the downtrodden.”
The party’s state general secretary, Vijay Bahadur Pathak said, “When we are running the state it becomes our responsibility to spread our good work to the last person in the state. We are taking the schemes to all the corners of the state but there is always room for improvement and Monday’s meeting was another step in that direction. It’s not about Kairana or Phoolpur. It’s about our commitment to serve those who have voted us to power. In the Monday meeting, the CM galvanized the cadre including MPs and MLAs to spread the message more aggressively.”
However, all said and done, a sense of nervousness is certainly there in the ruling party after the grand alliance bagged three key constituencies of UP in the bypolls. “They have joined together and that is the reason they won. We definitely bettered our tally to 47% vote share in the bypoll, which is great by any standards but when the entire opposition stands united, we have to increase it to more than 50% and now the message is clear. In an arena where religion and caste plays a major role, we need more people on our side,” said Balyan.