Ambedkar Nagar:
It's now all-out war between Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati over their celebrations in Uttar Pradesh for Dalit leader BR Ambedkar's birth anniversary.
After being told he could not garland the iconic Ambedkar statue in Ambedkar Nagar, which is Mayawati's constituency, Gandhi showered petals on an Ambedkar portrait in the Central Hall of Parliament in Delhi. He then travel to UP to lead the Congress' gigantic new exercise to win over the Dalit vote.
Gandhi's Congress and Mayawati's Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) planned parallel celebrations within metres of each other in the Dalit bastion of Ambedkar Nagar.
Team Mayawati insists that it has not told Gandhi that he cannot garland the Ambedkar statue in her constituency; he'll just have to wait till the UP Chief Minister is done.
The Congress, however, claims that Gandhi has been told that if his supporters mingle with Mayawati's in Ambedkar Nagar, there could be a law and order problem.
The commemorations today mark the tug-of-war for the Dalit vote in UP, as well as the launch of rival campaigns for the next UP elections, scheduled for 2012.
Gandhi will flag off 10 state-wide yatras which will hit the road with an armada of specially-constructed raths.
Barely 400 metres from the starting line for those raths is where Mayawati is hosting protests against the Women's Reservation Bill - pushed through the Rajya Sabha at the insistence of Sonia Gandhi. The bill sets aside 33 per cent of seats in parliament and state assemblies for women. Mayawati rejects it because it does not have a quota for Dalit women.
But her image as that of a champion of Dalits has tarnished a little among her voters, and the Congress is grabbing that as its main offense. In 2007, in the state elections, it was a combination of Dalits and Brahmins that swept Mayawati into power. In the general elections last year, the incongruous alliance was tiring. Fifty-six per cent of the state's Dalits did not vote, unhappy because they believed Brahmins were enjoying new power in a party that was meant to promote the interests of the castes and classes that had traditionally been overlooked.
An unnerved Mayawati has responded by indicating that 42 Brahmin representatives of her party in the state assembly will not be given tickets in the next state election. But the Congress everyday presents a carefully-calibrated narrative: of a self-assertive politician who abused the power Dalits gave her for jewels, garlands worth lakhs, monuments built for crores.
The Congress' calculation is that the Brahmins, now being shunned by the BSP, combined with the Dalits who're disappointed by Mayawati may lend themselves to a new vote.
What nobody's counting out, however, is Mayawati's determination and her ability to present herself as a woman of the masses, even when that link is not at its strongest.