The BSP, keen to rise to power or come gainfully close to it in Bihar, on Saturday announced its second bunch of names of 125 candidates for next month’s Assembly polls, reflecting careful calculations of the state’s caste equations and setting the stage for a controversy.
BSP boss and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati’s plans to replicate her successful domestic social engineering in Bihar were evident in the balance of castes the party’s strategists tried to achieve in selecting candidates. But the extra emphasis on the candidates’ castes in the list released by the party’s national general secretary, Gandhi Azad, is likely to attract disciplinary action for violation of the model code of conduct.
The lists had the castes of the candidates clearly mentioned in brackets after their names while different caste groups were highlighted in different colours. LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, when he learnt about it, protested, describing the BSP’s methodology as “a very wrong practice in a democracy”. The Bihar state election commission is likely to send the BSP’s candidates’ list to the Election Commission of India. When contacted, Bihar’s additional chief electoral officer (ACEO) Ansumali said: “I think it is in violation of the model code of conduct for elections,” additional chief electoral officer Ansumali said.
The BSP is contesting in all the 243 constituencies.