The Samajwadi Party has decided to celebrate the 127th anniversary of BR Ambedkar.
Days after it
joined hands with arch rival BSP to snatch the Lok Sabha seats from the BJP, the Samajwadi Party has decided to celebrate the 127th anniversary of Dalit icon Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar on April 14 in a big way.
The party has directed all its district units to celebrate Ambedkar Jayanti at the district party headquarters or any public place to mark the day, news agency PTI said.
Samajwadi Party which had been holding customary functions on Ambedkar Jayanti has this time asked its partymen to recall the services of Babasaheb as also his resolve taken while framing the Constitution.
SP's state unit president Naresh Uttam said that all district and city unit heads have been asked to pay homage and recall his immense contribution to the country and emancipation of the downtrodden.
This will be perhaps the first time that a conscious effort is being made by the SP to ensure celebrations on Dr Ambedkar Jayanti on a big scale.
The move is aimed at consolidating the friendship with the BSP, which helped it win two BJP strongholds - Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's Gorakhpur and his deputy Keshav Maurya's Phulpur parliamentary seats - in the bypolls recently.
The BSP had been organising Ambedkar Jayanti annually on a grand scale with party president Mayawati leading partymen in paying homage to the Dalit icon. There are, however, no plans yet to hold any joint SP-BSP programmes on the day.
"It is wrong to say that we will be celebrating Ambedkar Jayanti for the first time. The party has always paid tributes to Dr Ambedkar on his birth and death anniversary and we hold him in high esteem," SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said.
The BSP had been organising the eveent annually with party president Mayawati leading partymen in paying homage to the Dalit icon.
A senior SP leader on condition of anonymity said that party will try to remove doubts in the minds, if any, that its ideology was at variance with that of BSP and reach out to all sections of society.
The Ambedkar Jayanti will give a chance to increase the interaction and coordination between the cadres of both the parties in order to develop better understanding, he said.
BJP spokesman Rakesh Tripathi however said, "It is a big drama ever since the SP has made 'elephant' (BSP's election symbol) its friend, it is worried for the Dalits but the people of Uttar Pradesh have not forgotten how Dalits were at the receiving end on the very day when Akhilesh Yadav had become the chief minister in 2012 and how their houses and hamlets were set ablaze."
The understanding between the SP and the BSP in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bye-elections stopped the victory march of the BJP, which along with its allies had bagged 73 of the 80 parliamentary seats in the state.
While Gorakhpur is the home turf of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Phulpur was represented by his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya and defeats in both the places at the hands of the SP caused considerable embarrassment to the saffron party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, though the BJP took a sweet revenge soon afterwards by defeating the BSP candidate in the recent Rajya Sabha biennial elections in the state.
(with inputs from PTI)