KANPUR, January 19: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) obviously believes that the road to Lucknow runs through Delhi. ``The upcoming parliamentary polls will be a prelude to Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh,'' ex-chief minister Mayawati thundered during a relatively thinly-attended rally here today.It was the BSP's first public meeting here since the polls were announced. Mayawati, apparently irked by the turnout that was less than 2,000, ended her speech in eight minutes.BSP president Kanshi Ram, however, spoke for 45 minutes, highlighting the fact that the percentage of votes polled by his party has been increasing since 1985. ``We got two per cent votes in 1985's Lok Sabha elections, 11 per cent in 1991 and 21 per cent in 1996,'' he said.Today's rally was aimed chiefly at the electorate of the adjourning constituencies of Kanpur City and Bilhaur (Kanpur Dehat). Their lukewarm response to the Mayawati-Kanshi Ram rally was not entirely surprising. The local unit of the BSP has suffered convulsions following the defection of four (of the six) sitting BSP MLAs (three to the Bharatiya Janata Party and one to the Samajwadi Party) last October.Kanpur City and Bilhaur returned BJP candidates in 1996, Jagat Vir Singh and Shyam Bihari Mishra, respectively, winning comfortably.The BSP won six of Uttar Pradesh's 85 LS seats in 1996 but, significantly, its candidates polled more than one lakh votes in as many as 25 constituencies. ``Two years ago,'' Kanshi Ram told his audience, ``we lost 22 seats in UP by small margins. With a little more effort, we should win a lot more this time.'' Among promises of significance Kanshi Ram made today was that the entire Dalit spectrum would be represented in the party's list of candidates. He is still smarting under the en bloc defection by his party MLA in the October '97 coup that saw Kalyan Singh's continuance as UP CM. ``We had made 11 upper caste MLAs members (in Mayawati's government) but most have them defected. Nevertheless, we remain open to sarv samaj (all communities).
