Dalit leader Mayawati’s decision to support arch rival Samajwadi Party candidates in this week’s parliamentary bypolls in Uttar Pradesh against their common enemy, BJP, is significant in more ways than one. It has livened up the political scenario in the country’s most populous state, where the BJP juggernaut appeared to have trampled into the mud regional behemoths like the Samajwadi Party and BSP, after their successive debacles in the 2014 parliamentary elections and the state assembly polls in 2017.
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Such collaboration between the two warring parties would have been unimaginable even a few months ago, and it underlines how much they have been pushed to the wall by their formidable opponent.
Indeed Yogi Adityanath, the saffron clad monk who is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, with his characteristic rhetorical flourish, has mocked the hastily crafted SP-BSP alliance.
“Aisa lagta hai jaise koi toofan aata hai toh saanp aur chuchundar ek saath milke khade ho jaate hain. Inki yeh sthiti aa chuki hai (During a storm, a snake and a mole come together. These parties have been reduced to such a state),” he declared.
How Parties Fared in 2014 & 2017?
Yet, while Yogi and the BJP may scoff in public, they are likely to be quite worried at the potential of what currently is a limited SP-BSP collaboration gathering momentum in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
It would be a huge boost to opposition unity in Uttar Pradesh if the last minute order by Mayawati for her Jatav core base to support Samajwadi candidates in Gorakhpur and Phulpur is successful. But even if they put up a close fight in an election, which otherwise would have been a walkover for the BJP, it could spark off a debate on the need for the two regional parties to collaborate on a more systematic and coherent manner for future elections.
The results for the two constituencies in the 2014 parliamentary polls and their assembly segments in the 2017 assembly elections present an interesting contrast. In 2014, Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur and Keshav Chandra Maurya swept the polls with huge margins, bagging over 50 percent vote each, and even the combined vote of the SP and the BSP was far behind.
On the other hand, in the 2017 assembly polls, which the BJP also won in spectacular fashion in terms of vote share, the two regional parties fared much better, and their combined vote share was more in four out of the five assembly segments each in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.
There is little doubt that the difference between the decimation of the opposition in the parliamentary polls, and its better showing in the assembly elections, was mainly due to BJP stalwarts like Yogi Adityanath and Keshav Chandra Maurya contesting the former and ordinary party candidates the latter.
Significantly, in this week’s parliamentary bypolls in the two constituencies, the BJP has not been able to put up major leaders as candidates, and past logic would suggest that the outcome in terms of vote share at least should replicate the 2017 assembly polls, rather than the 2014 parliamentary elections.
Of Contrasting Constituencies & Multiple Prospects
It is true that after becoming chief minister, Yogi Adityanath’s stature in Gorkakhpur is huge, and he would try and prevent at any cost a defeat in his own bastion, which would no doubt be seen as a personal humiliation.
Yet, the opposition candidate Praveen Nishad, son of Sanjay Nishad, president of the Nishad Party now allied with the Samajwadi Party, is likely to get the entire vote of the powerful Nishad community in Gorakhpur and this, backed by the Yadav and Jatav core base of the SP-BSP combine along with a consolidated Muslim vote, could make the contest a stiff one. The internecine rivalries between the Brahmins and Thakurs of Gorakhpur could also make a difference although the Yogi, a Thakur leader, has cleverly put up a Brahmin candidate.
The Phulpur seat seems far more winnable than Gorakhpur for the SP-BSP combine as Keshav Chandra Maurya, former BJP chief of Uttar Pradesh, and now minister in Yogi’s cabinet, is no longer considered to be as powerful in the state as before.
He is also facing a challenge from a fellow Maurya – Swami Prasad – former close Mayawati aide, who had defected to the BJP before the assembly polls and has ambitions to be the main leader of his caste.
Why Mayawati May Be Stalling A ‘Full-Fledged’ Alliance?
It is also significant that the current understanding between the SP and the BSP is not so much a deal between their leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati, but brought about by persistent pressure from middle level leaders and activists of the two parties.
While the young Yadav chieftain, unlike his father, has been more open to an alliance with the former regional rival, it is Mayawati who is believed to have been restraining her supporters from announcing a full-fledged alliance with the Samajwadi Party.
In fact, this is one of the reasons why the collaboration for the parliamentary bypolls was announced so late, and even then the BSP supremo swiftly diluted it by calling it a temporary understanding and not a long term alliance.
Mayawati’s reluctance for an alliance may well be dictated by her wanting to bargain for more seats in the parliamentary polls, and also a fear of witch-hunt by the Centre on corruption charges.
However, her Dalit base is now restless after her series of defeats, and would like Behenji to get back to the winning way, regardless of whatever it takes. Meanwhile, the Yadavs much chastened after losing power, are willing to adopt a far conciliatory approach to Dalits and the fact that the Muslim supporters of both parties are virtually pleading everyday for them to come together to save them from the Yogi regime must be a strong imperative.
Yet much more political spadework needs to be done before such drastic realignment in Uttar Pradesh politics happens, and the pragmatic approach to the parliamentary bypolls is a small but crucial step forward.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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