The Young & the Restless

A new crop of young Dalit leaders shine in Uttar Pradesh's political Armament

- Zaina Azhar Sayeda

MAYAWATI has relieved her nephew Akash Anand of his responsibilities as the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) national coordinator and as her political successor until he attains “full maturity”, but there are many other young Dalit leaders in Uttar Pradesh (UP) who are gaining prominence in state politics.

Amid the peppermint farms of Barabanki’s Karpiya village, a discussion about one of them, who is an IITian, brews. “[Tanuj] Punia-ji itna bada pariksha pass kiye hain, woh chhaatron ki samasya samajhte hain (Punia-ji has passed such a big exam, he understands the problems students face),” Ram Lalli, mother of six, says. The other women nod in agreement. What all of them have in common besides being the victims of rising prices and crippling hunger is having at least one or two unemployed children or family members “wasting their education, toiling on farms”. Lalli says the repeated paper leaks in UP have quashed their hopes for jobs.

In UP’s Barabanki constituency, the Congress has fielded 39-year-old Tanuj Punia, an emerging Dalit face in state politics. This is the Congress leader’s second Lok Sabha election after he lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Upendra Singh Rawat in 2019, and was, in fact, the second runner-up after the Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Ram Sagar Rawat. He also contested two legislative assembly elections from Zaidpur in Barabanki, but failed to make his mark. In the past five years, Barabanki locals have come to know him as the ‘MP who isn’t’.