BJP to hold conventions of intellectuals from September 6

The BJP will be holding ‘Prabuddha Varg Sammelans’ (conventions of intellectuals) in each of the 403 assembly constituencies of UP between September 6 and 20, as part of the party’s efforts to reach out to the upper castes, its core voter base. Through these conventions, senior party leaders will be addressing the “intellectual class” including teachers, professors, doctors, engineers, writers, who also largely shape the decision-making process of society, and apprise them in detail about the policies and programmes of the central and state governments, said BJP leaders. The leaders have sought to distinguish these conventions from the ones being held by the BSP and the SP which aim at addressing the Brahmin community in particular. However, a senior BJP leader said that it is true that the intellectual class in the state is dominated by upper castes like Brahmins, Thakurs, Baniya and Kayastha.

BJP UP general secretary and in-charge of the Prabuddha Sammelan campaign, Subrat Pathak, said the party will launch a series of meetings from 17 districts on September 5, where senior leaders like CM Yogi Adityanath, UP BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh, general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal, BJP in-charge of UP Radha Mohan Singh, deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, among others, have been given a district each to address. Yogi will address a meeting in Varanasi, Radha Mohan will be in Prayagraj, Swatantra Dev in Ayodhya, Bansal in Lucknow and Maurya in Kanpur, he said.Upper castes form more than 20% of the state’s population (with Brahmins making roughly half of the category) and about 44% of the 2017 assembly –– the highest percentage since 1980s. Yogi himself is a Thakur. BSP’s Brahmin face, Satish Mishra, started these Prabuddha conventions from Ayodhya in July, after which SP followed suit, to highlight the perceived anti-Brahmin bias of the Yogi government. Brahmin organisations say it is not the BJP per se but Yogi that the community is finding itself estranged from.