The way votes were polled in favour of various parties in Vidarbha shows a new trend developing in the Dalit-dominated region, with the Congress-NCP combine gaining strength with the backing of the community’s voters and Dalit-centric parties and formations getting marginalised. What has also come as a surprise is that the Congress came out as the largest party here, winning 24 of the 27 seats that went to the Congress-NCP alliance’s kitty.

Dalit alienation, though receding, however, still helped the Sena-BJP combine retain its foothold in the region. Of the 27 seats that the saffron combine won, at least 10 could be attributed to the Dalit votes won by Prakash Ambedkar’s Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM), the BSP and the Third Front led by Ramdas Athawale.

One of the biggest Dalit vote turnarounds of this election has been the BSP’s rout, with the party being reduced to a virtual non-entity. In the 2004 elections, its candidates had made huge inroads, gaining up to 40,000 votes in some constituencies. This time, however, the BSP could do well only in about six constituencies, getting a maximum of over 29,000 votes in Digras, where the Shiv Sena’s sitting MLA Sanjay Rathod won. Incidentally, it was the only place in Yavatmal district, which has seven Assembly segments, where the saffron combine won.

Everywhere else, BSP candidates fared poorly. In Nagpur South, for example, its candidate Uttam Shevde could bag just about 10,000 votes, as against the 26,000 votes polled by Kiran Pandav last time, a non-Dalit choice of its social engineering plan. In fact, many of its candidates last time were non-Dalit dissidents sourced from other political parties. They had their own footing, which won them a large number of non-Dalit votes too.

... contd.