Click to play videoBhopal: Balendu Shukl, the BSP candidate from Gwalior South, is one of the 66 upper caste candidates that the BSP is fielding in this time in the Madhya Pradesh polls. Balendu, at one time, was the right hand man of the late Madhav Rao Scindia and has served as a minister in the Digvijay Singh cabinet.
But this time he was denied ticket by the Congress and so the BSP taken him into its fold.
"I was in the Congress but for the past seven years the Congress was not using my services. I was of no use to the party or to the people so I left the party and the BSP welcomed me," says he.
There are more than 20 Congressmen like Balendu who deserted their party for the BSP after being denied a ticket. Of the 34 seats in the Gwalior Shivpuri division, 10 new arrivals have got the BSP ticket after their careful assimilation into the party - a move that is directed at damaging the Congress in Madhya Pradesh.
Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia sought to downplay the BSP threat saying, "For me every party is important. Why just the BSP, the Samajwadi Party, the Jan Shakti party are all are important and a strategy has to be formulated on the basis of all the combatants in the ring."
While the Congress is keeping all its cards close to its chest, the BSP is boldly revealing its strategy with this social engineering program. But will this win the party more votes than the 7.26 per cent votes it go in the last election?
Most of the candidates fielded by the BSP are from upper castes; the party is trying to replicate the successful UP formula of Brahmin-Dalit alliance in MP as well and is hopeful it will have a role to play when the next government is formed in Madhya Pradesh.
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