BSP chief again cites Jat ‘casteist mindset’ for poll defeat

Lucknow: A day after the Haryana polls, BSP national president Mayawati once again blamed the "casteist mindset" of the Jats for her party's defeat. She said that Haryana, an agriculturally dominant state, saw most of the Jat community, traditionally linked to the agriculture sector, vote for the Congress Party due to dissatisfaction with the BJP's anti-farmer policies. She added that the BSP-INLD alliance received almost no Jat votes, except for one or two seats, largely because of the Jats' casteist mindset, while the Dalit vote fully transferred to its alliance partner, the INLD.
"The internal feud within the Chautala family even caused its traditional Jat vote to shift to other parties. This also led to the alliance losing the non-Jat vote, which benefited the BJP and allowed it to form the government in the state once again," said the BSP chief, adding, "The party workers worked very hard, but the party became a victim of the circumstances."
She further said that to defeat the BJP, the Jat vote consolidated in favour of the Congress and their candidates only got Dalit votes. If we had received even a small portion of the Jat vote, we would have won a few seats, she added.
"We will have to work on changing the mentality of the Jats in Haryana towards Dalits, as we did in UP. Situations like this may arise in the future, and we will rework our strategy accordingly," she added.
Regarding the Jammu and Kashmir elections, she noted that the party had fielded candidates only in the Jammu region. Although the party did not win any seats, the candidates garnered a significant number of votes.
Mayawati announced that the BSP would contest the upcoming Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Delhi assembly elections. "In Delhi, we will strive to improve our performance. It seems that the contest will be triangular, involving BJP, Congress, and AAP, and our party may benefit from this. Our party suffers in a direct fight, but when three or more parties are involved, we tend to gain," she said.