Desperate to find a foothold in Uttar Pradesh, once its bastion bulldozed by political parties pursuing caste based identity politics, the Congress is gearing up to woo Brahmins with the ultimate objective of exploiting the caste fault lines in the state.
With this in mind, former Union minister of state Jatin Prasada had launched the Brahmin Chetna Parishad in July.
The Congress leader has now announced to intensify the ‘woo Brahmin campaign’ and constitute T-20 teams in all the 75 districts of the state.
The Chetna Parishad has also decided to constitute an advisory committee in which retired bureaucrats will also be included. Presently retired IPS officer VP Mishra is the chairman of the Brahmin Chetna Parishad. Earlier this week, the Brahmin Chetna Parishad had announced the appointment of district presidents for 25 districts.
According to Brahmin Chetna Parishad, all the district presidents are young and they have been asked to make themselves available 24x7 for helping the community.
The T-20 team, according to Jatin Prasada, will extend legal assistance to the Brahmin families facing persecution and coercion from the state authorities.
He said the Brahmin Chetna Parishad along with the T-20 team was “giving a voice” to the Brahmin community, which was being “systematically targeted” in the Yogi Adityanath rule.
“Since the Adityanath government came to power, crimes against Brahmins have increased manifold. They are being killed, and they are not being given any justice,” he said.
Moreover, Prasada claimed that Brahmins were the most targeted community, even more than the oppressed castes in the state.
“At the moment, data tells us that Brahmin killings are disproportionately high, more than of members of other castes,” he claimed. Prasada, who served as Minister of State for Human Resource Development and held a number of other portfolios in the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance governments, said the Yogi government had meted out “step-motherly” treatment to Brahmins.
As the UP Assembly elections are little over a year away, the opposition parties are vying with each other to woo Brahmins, who constitute nearly 12 percent of the state’s population.
The Samajwadi Party is projecting its Brahmin leaders Abhishek Mishra and Manoj Pandey while the Bahujan Samaj Party has also intensified its efforts to revive its Sarva Samaj campaign.
The BSP, during the 2007 UP Assembly election, had gone to the polls with an inclusive agenda. The gamble paid rich dividends and the BSP was voted to power with a clear majority.
