Officially, the SP, the BJP and the Congress are, pooh-poohing Mayawati's attempts to woo the Brahmins. SP state president Ram Saran Das claims that his party has real Brahmin leaders while the BSP's Brajesh Pathak and Ramveer Upadhayay "are just mafiosi". BJP state president Kesrinath Tripathi stresses the Brahmins who have gone to the BSP are "opportunists" and that it will not affect the mass of Brahmin votes as they still remember the anti-upper-caste slogans mouthed by the party. UP Congress leader Pramod Tiwari too says the Brahmins will not forgive the BSP: "As the Brahmins are no longer with Vajpayee, they will now return to the Congress."
Of course, what Mayawati's political rivals are hoping is that her espousal of the Brahmins will backfire on her core constituency among the Dalits. The Congress general secretary in charge of UP, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, says: "There is a great deal of churning among her Dalit supporters. They are concerned about this 180 degrees turn in the party ideology. There are the beginnings of a rift. I don't know whether Mayawati will be able to keep her base intact. Already, a few days ago, DS-4, the organisation initially created by BSP founder Kanshi Ram from which the party has grown, had a rally in Lucknow where its members denounced this turnaround." But Ambedrajan dismisses this, saying Brahmins will never get the upper hand. "They can't empower or overpower us—we outnumber them."
