BSP, Gondwana Gantantra Party form alliance to contest Chhattisgarh state polls

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) will jointly contest the upcoming assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, party leaders said in a joint press conference on Monday.

The BSP will contest in 53 seats and GGP in 37 seats in the 90-member Chhattisgarh state assembly, leaders of the two parties said at a joint press conference.

“(A) Majority (of) women will be given tickets from the alliance,” the leaders added.

Members of all tribal communities are welcome to join the alliance and issues connected with “Jal Jangal Zameen” (water, forest, land) will be its focus, party leaders said, adding that a tribal will be made the state’s chief minister if the alliance comes to power.

In the 2018 assembly elections, BSP had formed an alliance with Ajit Jogi-led Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) and Communist Party of India (CPI), which bagged seven seats with a total vote share of 7.6 %.

The BSP contested in 35 seats and won two of them - Jaijaipur and Pamgarh constituencies -- while the JCC bagged five seats.

The GGP had unsuccessfully contested 38 seats in 2018 with their candidates losing their election deposits in 36 seats.

Ramji Gautam, BSP’s Chhattisgarh in-charge and Rajya Sabha MP, said the alliance will fight for the rights of Dalits, tribals and poor people from all sections of the society.

“ We will win this election as Gondwana Gantantra Party represents the tribals and BSP has a huge vote bank of scheduled caste ( SC) in Chhattisgarh. The OBC community is also with us and the combination of all will work,” Gautam said.

“The BSP-GGP alliance appears to be a new thing for Chhattisgarh politics. In 2018, it was the CCJ and BSP and not GGP-BSP which had an alliance. Ideologically, this alliance is a perfect match as GGP talks about tribals while BSP claims to be a champion of the downtrodden, especially Dalits. If someone combines the SC-ST votes of Chhattisgarh, one has the winning equation. However, things are not that optimistic on ground,” said a senior Congress leader who asked not to be named.

The leader claimed that the SC voters of Chhattisgarh are concentrated in the state’s central belt around the Bilaspur, Durg and Raipur administrative zones and the state’s SC reserved seat lies in that belt and two BSP MLAs are from the region.

“The ST vote on the other hand is mostly concentrated in the north and south of the state, while also maintaining presence in the central belt. So, while BSP’s presence is limited to two-three districts and just one community, GGP is almost absent from that zone and has influence somewhere else. Hence, transfer of votes between them, even if perfect, might not create a winning equation,” said the leader.

“The GGP is not an all-ST party but primarily a Gond community-based organisation. Though Gond are the most populous in the ST community, they don’t control the tribal politics of the state, which has numerous ST communities like Kanwar, Oraon, Khairwar etc,” said the leader.