BHOPAL: Eyeing the crucial 16 per cent Dalit vote, both leading political parties – the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress are getting their top leaders to assembly poll-bound Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, where Dalits roughly constitute around 20-25 per cent of the population.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Bundelkhand’s Sagar district on August 12 to lay the foundation for the Rs 100 crore temple dedicated to Bhakti Movement saint and Dalit icon Sant Ravidas. Congress’s national president Malikarjun Kharge is likely to address a mega rally in the same Sagar district on August 13.
Prime Minister Modi will on August 12 (it will be his fifth visit to Madhya Pradesh in less than 5 months) lay the foundation of the grand temple at Badtuma (Sagar), whose construction was announced by MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan at the Sant Ravidas Mahakumbh in February. On the other hand, the Congress president’s rally the next day (August 13) in the same district, will mark the launch of the grand old party’s poll campaign in the Bundelkhand region.
Importantly, Dalits constitute 16 per cent of the state’s population. Out of the total 230 seats, 35 are Supreme Court reserved seats, a major part of which is in the Bundelkhand and adjoining Gwalior-Chambal and Vindhya regions. Bundelkhand region (particularly Sagar district) houses a predominant population of the Ahirwar-SC caste.
In the 2013 elections, when the BJP had won 165 seats, it had emerged victorious on 28 or 80 per cent of these 35 seats, while the Congress could manage just four seats, followed by BSP with 3 seats. But five years later in 2018 polls, the BJP’s tally on the 35 SC reserved seats fell to just 18, while the Congress’s count jumped more than four times to 17 seats.
