Back in 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati was being talked about as a possible prime minister of India, at least in Uttar Pradesh (UP), where I live. ,The next Prime Minister of the country will give an alliance, and we would like that if someone is formed from the population, then nothing will be better than that. Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party (SP) softly backs Mayawati’s candidature saying (SP-BSP alliance will give country its next prime minister and I will be very happy if PM comes from other section of population) post in 2019, when SP and BSP contested that year’s general election together. Failing to achieve the desired results, however, Mayawati blamed Akhilesh Yadav for the BSP’s election defeat, even as her party’s seats in Parliament jumped from 0 to 10, a clear advantage of her alliance. The four-time chief minister continued to show respect, perhaps in an effort to win over the state’s Dalits, perhaps the party’s traditional voter base.
Today, the road ahead for Mayawati’s BSP looks rough and laden with concrete baked by the scorching summer sun, on which the party is forced to walk barefoot. The party managed to win just one of the 403 seats it contested in the UP Assembly elections earlier this year. This is worse than Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, where it has 2–2 seats, and is on par with Punjab’s count. What is worrying is not that its presence in the Uttar Pradesh assembly has been reduced to just 1 seat, but also the fact that the party which had survived the last three elections without significant loss of vote share, made it almost the first time. Half done. The year.
Many reasons can be given for this defeat of BSP, but the main reason is definitely the change in the dynamics of the elections in UP. Voting in India’s most populous state has become increasingly bipolar and the political theme has changed by staying relevant and active in opposition to the SP ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has posed a major challenge to it. B J P. Another reason behind the decline of BSP is that many of its leaders left the party and went to SP; Some even went to the BJP. “We are known only to Babu Ram Achal, when Wu is in the elephant, we press the button of the elephant, now Vu is in the cycle, we know only to Ram Achal Rajbhar. When he was in the BSP, we called the BSP Now that he is in SP, we will vote for cycles),” said a voter in Akbarpur assembly constituency, a seat which Rajbhar has lost only once (in 2012) since 1993. This year, he contested on an SP ticket. For the first time ever and BSP finished third which was once a reserved seat for the party.
So, is this the end of the road for the BSP and the country’s most electorally successful Dalit leader ever?
While the BSP suffered its worst defeat in recent elections, Mayawati clearly remains a popular Dalit leader in India’s politically most important state. Yet, the scale of her party’s defeat is clearly visible in the fact that apart from one seat (Rasara), it could not even finish second in 385 of the other 402 assembly constituencies. The party also suffered a complete defeat in its former strongholds. In 2017, of the 19 seats it won, three were in Ambedkar Nagar. This time, however, the party failed to achieve runner-up status in four of the five competitions in that district. Instead the SP won the district, and interestingly, out of its five candidates, four had either defected from the BSP or were expelled by the latter just before the election. Even Shyam Sundar Sharma, who had been winning the Mant seat of Mathura district since 1989 (though he lost once to Jayant Choudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal in 2012, lost to win it back in the 2014 by-elections). did not like). Enough votes to win.
The vote-share data worries the BSP the most. This year, it got just 12.9 per cent of all votes cast in UP, which is significantly less than its share of a little over 22.2% in 2017. A large number of BSP voters have migrated to BJP or SP. At a time when both these parties have made a strong showing in the state, it will not be an easy task for Mayawati’s party to get its voters back from them. Perhaps the best it can hope for is to hold on to its remaining vote share.
Another thing that may be a matter of concern for the BSP is that apart from Mayawati, it has no other Dalit face whom it can project as the future leadership of the party. Thus its revival in Uttar Pradesh will be an uphill task, at least for the foreseeable future. In the short term, the party is left with only two options: either forge an alliance with one of UP’s two major players, or make a bold move to merge the party with one of them.
The BJP’s history of ties with most of its allies across the country may act as a hindrance to any attempt by the BSP to come closer to the saffron party, but in the present context, the SP may be a viable alternative. The joint victory will give some credit to the BSP and perhaps the SP can be blamed for their loss in the alliance, which had a string of failed alliances with the Congress party in 2017, with the BSP in 2019, and more recently this year. Has a rich history. RLD.
Syed Kamran is a journalist based in Lucknow.
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