It was one of the most keenly watched elections not for its sheer size alone, but for the strategy of Mayawati to unite Upper castes with her Dalit vote bank. The thumping victory she got would lead to a lot of re-engineering of vote banks. There definitely exists a large chunk of disgruntled and unrepresented forward caste vote base who have literally become orphans without any representation whatsoever in the minds of politicians. With the OBC issue becoming so hotly debated and all political parties out to aggressively woo them, the only section of the society which does not seem to get any attention is the Forward castes and yes - there lies the opportunity for the political parties to champion their cause aong with Dalits and Tribals wherever these form a large vote bank. The fun will start now - with Forward castes who were never on the vote-bank landscape arriving as a key factor. It will be interesting to see how BJP and INC are going to react to this. After all, all parties talk about Dalits, Tribals, OBCs, Minorities with special preference to Muslim minorities. Mayawati's USP has been to talk about Forward castes in the same breath as she talked about Dalits. Let the FUN begin.
