Munde, Athavale to share dais at Ramabai Nagar
Ketaki Ghoge, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, February 08, 2011
First Published: 01:51 IST(8/2/2011)
Dalit leader Ramdas Athavale and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader
Gopinath Munde will share the dais at Ghatkopar's Ramabai Ambedkar
Nagar, 14 years after the Dalit colony had turned against Munde and
the saffron combine following the deaths of 11 Dalits in police firing
here. Athavale,
who heads the Republican Party of India (RPI), and Munde, will come
together on February 10, to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the
renaming of Marathwada University after Dalit icon Dr Babasaheb
Ambedkar, which falls on January 14.
On July 7, 1997, after 11 people were killed in the police firing at
Ramabai Nagar, Athavale, like most Dalit leaders, demanded the scalp
of Munde, who was the home minister then.
Munde had supported the police's theory that they had to fire to
prevent a rioting mob from torching an oil tanker. Munde's stand
turned Dalits against him.
The community voted against the Shiv Sena-BJP combine in the 1999
Assembly elections.
Athavale's move to join hands with the saffron parties 14 years later
signals his growing frustration with the ruling alliance and his party
workers' dissatisfaction with being left out of the power equation in
the state.
None of the prominent Dalit leaders got elected to Parliament in the
2009 Lok Sabha elections. Athavale lost from his constituency, Shirdi,
and blamed the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party for it.
"Athavale is doing this for political survival by sending a signal to
the Congress-NCP that he has other choices. The Sena and BJP are
playing politics of opportunism," political analyst Surendra Jondhale
said. He added that in the last two elections, Dalits have shown that
they are making their own electoral choices and clearly not backing
parties like Athawale's RPI as a mass.
Dr Pradip Jawale, who has lived in Ramabai Nagar for 40 years, said:
"There is lot of anger among people here after he met Thackeray and
this political stunt of getting Munde is not going to win him any
brownie points. Dalits don't vote for the RPI as a united group any
more. The electorate is fractured."
Athavale disagreed.
"The locals themselves decided to call Munde because he had
participated in the movement for renaming Marathwada University and
even went to jail for it," Athavale said.
"He is being called not as a BJP leader but as a politician and
backward classes leader who supported Dalits then."
He admitted that political equations were changing.
"Sena chief Bal Thackeray has given us a proposal to unite Bhim Shakti
and Shiv Shakti," he said. "We have not taken any decision but there
is sense of disenchantment with Congress and NCP among party workers."
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