Bucking the perception of being the ‘B’ team of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is set to spoil the prospects of the BJP in the first two rounds of voting for Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. Ahead of the BSP’s first big-ticket rally in western U.P.’s Nagina constituency on April 6, to be addressed by party leader Akash Anand, the caste equation of the party’s candidates for the 16 seats that go to polls on April 19 and 26 reveals that party supremo Mayawati aims to dent the vote banks of both the ruling NDA and the Opposition INDIA bloc in the region. Both the Samajwadi Party and the BSP are struggling to fight against the combined strength of the BJP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in the region. However, political observers say that the BSP’s strategy is to build its core vote bank of Jatavs by using discontentment among specific communities to its advantage, while hoping that Muslims will show faith in Ms. Mayawati’s non-partisan stand. The BSP has fielded Muslim candidates from Kairana, Rampur, Pilibhit, Moradabad, Saharanpur, and Amroha. Except for Pilibhit, these are seats where the Muslim population is more than 45%. “Hum ko BJP aur SP dono ka khel bigadna hain. Tabhi hamara game banega (We have to spoil the game of the BJP and the SP to secure our prospects),” said Suraj Singh, the BSP leader in charge of the Aligarh and Kanpur divisions. “By polarising the election, the BJP picks the SP as its easy rival. It feels threatened by the BSP because it has a dedicated cadre and vote. So it uses a section of the media to project that the BSP is against the interest of Muslims. We are working on the ground to change that perception and in seats like Aligarh, we don’t feel we need a Muslim candidate to get the community’s vote,” he said, adding that the party was fighting to save the Constitution and ensure reservation in jobs.