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BSP decides to contest 125 seats

By Our Special Correspondent

JAIPUR NOV. 2. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) today released its list of 125 candidates for the coming Assembly elections in Rajasthan. While releasing the names the party in charge for the State, Shambu Dayal, said the list was final and the party would not be field candidates in the remaining 75 constituencies.

The BSP list, devoid of the name of any known politician in Rajasthan -- barring one Hafeez Ahmed, a former Minister who has been nominated from Pirawa constituency-- however has provoked both the ruling Congress and the Opposition BJP to accuse each other of entering into a tacit understanding with the BSP.

The BSP has fielded candidates in almost all districts -- barring Jaisalmer which has got only one Assembly constituency -- in the State but the concentration is more in the eastern districts of Alwar, Bharatpur and Dholpur and in the northern districts of Hanumangarh and Sriganganagar. The BSP which contested from 110 seats in the 1998 Assembly elections, had then won from two seats with an aggregate vote percentage of 2.16.

Politicla observers feel that the BSP position is no better today than in 1998. This is specially so when two of the MLAs who emerged victorious then are not with it any more. While one of them, Jagat Singh Dayma, is dead the other, Mohammed Mahir Azad has joined the Congress. However, the party has some following in the districts adjoining Uttar Pradesh and in other Dalit pockets.

Despite an announcement by the party chief, Mayawati, that the BSP would strive to defeat the BJP in the forthcoming elections, it is not immediately possible to assess whether the process of selection of the nominees as well as the seats chosen for contesting have been influenced by any desire to favour one party or the other.

Today while the Congress spokesman, Raghu Sharma, alleged that the BSP's decision to not contest 75 seats was a result of an understanding with the BJP, the chief spokesman of the Rajasthan unit of BJP, Kali Charan Saraf, on the other hand accused the Congress of striking a deal with the BSP.

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