NEW DELHI: The one party that is likely to stand to gain from the Badaun riots in western UP over Urdu being accorded the second official language status is the Bahu jan Samaj Party, for history seems to be repeating itself in this region. It is this very belt that was affected by the October, 1961 communal riots which started from Aligarh Muslim University and spread to Meerut and Moradabad districts and led to coalition between Harijans and Muslims under the Republican Party of India.
The result was that the Republican Party won as many as eight seats with 3.8 percent of the total votes cast in the 1962 assembly elections. The party’s victory was confined to four western districts Badaun, Aligarh, Agra and Moradabad, These districts had large Muslim populations and in three of them scheduled castes were the largest Hindu caste group.
In fact, the election campaign ‘was so vitriolic in its communalism that an election tribunal had to overturn the result in the Aligarh city assembly constituency where a Muslim candidate of the Republican Party had won.
The BSP’s strong showings in many assembly and Parliamentary by elections since then are well known. But the message is very clarify it does not ally itself with the Muslims or some other group ULP, in an overall state assembly elections, it is highly unlikely to bag enough seats to emerge as a veritable force to reckon with. But the writing on the wall is loud and clear: the BSP stands to gain substantially in the Agra Aligarh Badaun Moradabad region in view of the latest situation there.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 3, 1989
