Akola, Oct. 18: Under a pandal sits a small gathering, mostly farmers and landless farm labourers from rural Akola. Nearby, some men and women are cooking meals. A small water tanker is parked a few feet away.

Someone’s farm has been cleared for the meeting. Around noon, an SUV arrives with the candidate, a bespectacled man in his mid-50s, dressed in a white shirt and blue trousers.

A few young men rush to greet him. Someone raises a slogan: “Victory for Bharip-Bahujan Mahasangha!”

It’s a simple welcome ceremony, bereft of extravagance or a show of muscle power. Far from the high-decibel campaigns of the big national and regional parties, Haridas Bhade is addressing small gatherings or canvassing door to door.

The two-time MLA from the half-rural and half-urban Akola (East) represents the Bharatiya Republican Party-Bahujan Mahasangh (Bharip-BMS), floated three decades ago by Prakash “Balasaheb” Ambedkar, former MP and grandson of Babasaheb Ambedkar.

The party, which follows Babasaheb’s vision of mobilising all the backward sections and not just the Dalits, has pockets of support in Akola and neighbouring districts, mainly in western Vidarbha.

Of the 23 factions of the erstwhile Republican Party of India (RPI), including the one led by Ramdas Athawale that is now part of the BJP-led alliance, Bharip-BMS is the only one with a social and political base of its own. The rest have been decimated over the past two decades by faction feuds and their leaders’ political opportunism.

Today, the RPI’s Dalit space is occupied almost entirely by Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party though it is yet to open its account in the Maharashtra Assembly.

Since the state’s two broad alliances split late last month, setting up a multi-cornered fight, smaller parties such as the Bharip-BMS and the Independents have gained in importance.

For instance, there’s the Jan Surajya Party, led by former minister Vinay Kore, in pockets of western Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district; the Peasants and Workers Party, a once formidable party of socialists with support bases in northwest Maharashtra and Konkan; and the Left, influential in parts of the northwest and the tribal belt.

Constant contact

The Bharip-BMS has fielded about 40 candidates in Vidarbha, of whom at least 10 are in contention, say party activists in Akola. Bhade is one of them.

Bhade is a Dhangar, a backward caste that has been demanding Scheduled Tribe status. He enjoys Dalit and Other Backward Classes backing, which he attributes to his regular communication and contact with the electorate.

“I didn’t begin campaigning yesterday,” he says, confident of victory despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s apparent popularity in both the rural and urban areas of his constituency.

“I’ve already finished several rounds of campaigning in rural areas,” he says, adding that he would now focus on the urban half of Akola (East).

Bhade’s strength is his party’s committed rural workers who, he insists, don’t seek money to campaign for him. A space in the political process is incentive enough for them.

“Dalits and the poor, who were never heard in the panchayats or zilla parishads, enjoy some degree of power today. That’s our main strength,” Bhade says.

“We get support from all sections. In a multi-cornered fight like this one, money can’t defeat our political collective.”

Not just Dalits

Bhade’s meeting has drawn representatives from virtually every community: OBCs, Dalits, Muslims, upper castes. The party had two MLAs in the dissolved Assembly.

Long before Mayawati’s “rainbow coalition” lifted her to power in Lucknow in 2007, Prakash Ambedkar had mobilised Dalits, backward classes and Muslims in and around Akola in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But Prakash’s refusal to join forces with the other Republican factions and Dalit fronts in the state are among the factors that have kept his success confined to small pockets like this one.

Socio-politically, Maharashtra’s Dalits are divided into two major groups, the Buddhists (mostly from the Mahar caste and sub-castes) and the Hindus. The RPI factions’ influence is limited to the Buddhists, who make up around 7 to 8 per cent of the total population.

The Buddhist Dalits have by and large backed the Congress-NCP whereas the Hindu Dalits, about 8 to 9 per cent of the population, are scattered among the main political forces, including the BJP and the Shiv Sena.

The Bharip-BMS is the only RPI faction that has looked beyond the Dalits and courted the Other Backward Classes.

It enjoys considerable backing among the Dalit-OBC communities in rural Akola, and has held the zilla parishad for many years. But rapid urbanisation is depleting its support base.

In the Lok Sabha elections, Prakash finished a distant third but polled about 1.5 lakh votes.

At places they don’t win, Bharip-BMS candidates have been dividing the “secular votes” to the benefit of the BJP or Sena. The BJP has won the Akola Lok Sabha seat for the past several years because of a triangular contest.

When Prakash won the Lok Sabha election in 1998 and 1999, it was with the Congress’s tacit support.