Sources in her government say orders have gone out for conducting a census of sorts to identify villages which boast of Dalit population of 50% and above.
It’s another ace up the Dalit icon’s sleeve. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has come up with a masterstroke to consolidate her Dalit votebank before the 2012 UP assembly election.
Sources in her government say orders have gone out for conducting a census of sorts to identify villages which boast of Dalit population of 50% and above.
These villages would be notified as Ambedkar villages and would get a lavish dose of development works and welfare schemes just before the election.
Already, Mayawati has allocated a liberal portion in her latest budget to the special component plan (SCP), making it amply clear that BSP is back to its Dalit agenda with a vengeance. The first indication came in this year’s budget wherein SCP meant exclusively for scheduled castes was pegged at Rs9,722 crore, 6.8% higher than last year.
Mayawati’s obsession for parks and memorials was also reflected in the budget which provides for Rs122 crore for their upkeep. A whopping Rs800 crore has been earmarked for roads and drains in 2,249 Ambedkar villages.
The Ambedkar Gram Yojna, directed at speeding up development of Dalit-dominated villages, was started by Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 when Mulayam Singh Yadav was UP chief minister. However, the scheme remained only on paper till 1995 when Mayawati became CM for the first time.
A senior official involved in the latest exercise of identifying the Ambedkar villages says the government is planning a media blitzkrieg to tell people that it was for the first time in 1995 under Mayawati’s regime that Ambedkar Gram Yojana was implemented. The campaign, the official says, would also highlight that SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was also implemented in UP the same year.
Mayawati in her first stint as CM had pegged the Dalit population requirement for a village to be notified as an Ambedkar village at 60%. But, successive governments led by BJP and Samajwadi Party reduced the quantum, first to 40 and then as low as 20%.
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