Nitish eyes Pasi votes to better base

Lucknow: Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) president Nitish Kumar would be addressing a rally at Lucknow's Bijli Pasi Quila on Tuesday. This would be Nitish's first major political event in Lucknow in the past couple of months. Party insiders say he would be using the occasion to widen his party base, and at the same time use the forum to woo Pasi community (which constitutes 16% of UP's Dalit population) from the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Senior JD(U) leader KC Tyagi told TOI that at present, the party is trying to revamp itself in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. "We are not going for a tie-up with any political party in the state," Tyagi said, adding that groundwork to expand the party's base in UP is on.
Pasis who constitute of UP's SC population are second largest in terms of numbers after the Jatavs.
Tuesday's rally assumes significance as out of 403 MLAs, 57 are Pasi. "In SP alone, more than two dozen MLAs are Pasi," said Ram Lakhan Pasi, the chairman of the Veerangana Uda Devi Smarak Sansthan evam Maharaja Bijli Pasi Sanskritik Sansthan.
On Tuesday's event, he said, "The Pasi voters are angry with RK Chaudhary and he is holding this event only to get the ticket to contest the assembly elections from Mohanlalganj." Chaudhary recently quit BSP and joined hands with JD(U) for the coming elections.
, claimed that the credentials of RK Chaudhary are not sound, and his Bihar card may not prove to be the trump card in UP.