By TwoCircles.net staff writer,
Lucknow: Of late the Samajwadi Party has consolidated its position in the Brahmin community of Uttar Pradesh. This reality was evident in the last Assembly polls when SP candidates trounced Congress rivals in all the five Assembly seats.
This was not always so. This area happens to be the Lok Sabha constituency of Mrs Sonia Gandhi, a seat nurtured by Mrs Indira Gandhi.
Rajesh Dixit, General Secretary, SP
In adjacent Amethi, the parliamentary constituency of Rahul Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, Congress could win only two Assembly seats, while in neighbouring Sultanpur, Congress lost all five seats.
The media attributed the Congress rout to the silent electioneering campaign of a five feet seven inch, 73 kg man in his early-40s, Rajesh Dixit. The taciturn, well-built man of wheatish complexion is the Brahmin face of Samajwadi Party, who has drawn a sizeable part of the community away from its long time favourite Congress into SP.
Over the months and years, Dixit has not been sitting on his laurels. The latest round of heavy mobilisation of Brahmins in favour of SP has been conducted by Dixit. Congregations of the community in Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Agra in recent days were largely his doing.
On Parshuram Jayanti (May 12), UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav assured a congregation of Brahmins of fair play and SP support.
The man behind this programme, too, was Rajesh Dixit, who enjoys the support of SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and prominent leader Ram Gopal Yadav.
This self-effacing soft spoken National Secretary of SP credits his success to party leaders and functionaries in the field. Dixit, who also works among Muslims, says, “I am only a loyal soldier of my party.”