Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati recently announced that she has decided to contest the 2024 general elections solo on the plea that a pre-poll alliance hurts her party’s prospects while benefiting allies.
The truth of the matter is that in the BSP’s bastion, Uttar Pradesh, neither the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) nor the recently formed Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) grouping of Opposition parties, are actually ready to ally with the capricious Behenji whose political ambition is sadly out of sync with her fading mass appeal in the state.
It is the same story in the few other states where the BSP has a fast-fading presence but persists, nevertheless, in driving a hard bargain for seat sharing with potential allies.
A Covert Weapon for the BJP Vote Machine in UP
The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led NDA is at a pole position in Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha polls and has shown no interest at all in allying with the BSP.
Instead, the entire strategy of the ruling party, like in previous polls, both parliamentary and assembly, is to use the BSP to wean away as many Dalit and Muslim votes as possible and act as a spoiler for any kind of Opposition consolidation of the anti-BJP vote.
This divide-and-rule ploy has been fairly effective in the recent past but now losing potency with word steadily getting around Dalit and Muslim communities that a vote for the BSP may indirectly benefit the BJP.
In fact, one of the main reasons cited by former supporters of Mayawati for deserting her is that she is no longer a leader of the oppressed masses but has become, willingly or inadvertently, a covert weapon for the formidable BJP vote machine in Uttar Pradesh.
BSP’s Absence From the INDIA Bloc
As for the INDIA coalition, the Congress leadership had initially been eager to rope in Behenji in its effort to forge a united front of all parties in Uttar Pradesh that were not in the BJP camp.
However, this was fiercely opposed by Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav, who has been openly hostile to Mayawati ever since she abruptly scuttled their political alliance formed for the 2019 parliamentary elections shortly after the BJP swept to victory. He feels particularly aggrieved that she had done so despite raising her parliamentary tally to ten seats in 2019 from zero in 2014 because of the BSP’s alliance with SP, while the latter palpably suffered slumping to five seats — half the number the party had won in the previous Lok Sabha polls.
Had the Congress done well in the recent round of assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, the party's high command may well have tried to persuade Akhilesh to rethink his position on not accommodating Mayawati in the Opposition alliance. But its bargaining position considerably diminished after being thrashed by the BJP in the polls and with Akhilesh already bristling about his party being refused an alliance in Madhya Pradesh by the Congress, the latter hastily backed off on the BSP issue.
Indeed, Behenji, who was under pressure to strike a deal with INDIA by her large number of Muslim MPs fearful of losing badly this time if they contested without allies, had little option but to go solo.
The BSP’s absence from the ranks of the INDIA bloc may at first glance seem to weaken the Opposition alliance in Uttar Pradesh. However, given the trend of virtually the entire Muslim support base of Mayawati abandoning her along with the simultaneous disenchantment of Dalit supporters including her own sub-caste, the Jatavs, the BSP may no longer be that big of an electoral asset to the Opposition camp in Uttar Pradesh. Certainly, if Behenji had to be accommodated in the problematic task of seat sharing among the several parties in the Opposition alliance, it would been a far more difficult, if not impossible, challenge.
An Increasingly Irrelevant Leader and Party, Despite Their Legendary Past
Mayawati’s claim that her party does better fighting on its own rather than in alliance is also not correct. For instance, in the last parliamentary polls, the BSP in alliance with SP had bagged 10 out of 80 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh with a vote share of 19.4 per cent although it contested less than half the number of total seats. Three years later in the 2022 state assembly polls, the party contesting all 403 assembly seats managed to get only a single seat with its vote share diving to 13 per cent.
There is little doubt that the political stature of both Mayawati and the BSP has vastly diminished after the terrible beating it took in the last assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. On the other hand, the Samajwadi Party, fighting in alliance with the Rastriya Lok Dal, did put up a credible contest winning as many as 111 seats and getting over 32 percent vote, although the BJP swept to victory.
The results of the assembly polls have left Behenji in a far weaker bargaining position than Akhilesh with other political parties outside the BJP camp in the country’s most populous and politically crucial state.
It is, therefore, not surprising that Akhilesh had the last say in keeping the BSP out of INDIA, presenting Behenji with a fait accompli, whatever spin she may choose to give in public. In any case, the daunting task faced by the motley alliance of Opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh of not getting trampled under the formidable double engine steam roller of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is unlikely to be influenced by an increasingly irrelevant leader and party, despite their legendary past.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist and the author of ‘Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati’. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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