Bangalore: The poverty-stricken, illiterate masses of India — comprising over 50% of our population — are the wisest people gifted with the best of foresight.
Here is a report from a noted Muslim journalist from UP, Suroor Ahmed.
Apart from psephologists there is another gentleman who, though nowhere in the race, received a huge blow. And that is the Union Fertilizer Minister, Ram Vilas Paswan. The Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati, once again proved that as regards Dalit leadership there should be no doubt left in anyone’s mind. If the Congress wants to have any truck with her — and why not — in the next parliamentary election it may be forced to do away with Ram Vilas Paswan, who alone may now not even win his own Lok Sabha seat in Parliament. His outfit, the Lok Janshakti Party, won four seats in 2004 Lok Sabha only because it had an alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. And in the Assembly election of that state in 2005 he let down the Congress in his home state. Paswan is now not able to pressurise the Congress on the Dalit leadership issue. (Radiance, May 20, 2007).
DV had long back pronounced its verdict on this bogus Dalit leader who is the darling of the upper castes. In the UP-Assembly election, he posed as a big Dalit leader with the full support of the Brahminical toilet papers. The lone MLA from his party joined BSP after getting elected, ditching Paswan.
