Mayawati | Solo Ambition
Mayawati | Solo Ambition
Ending all speculations, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on January 15, her birthday, declared that her party will contest the Lok Sabha election alone, dashing the hopes of INDIA or the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, especially the Congress, which was keen on her joining the Opposition alliance. So much so that the national party had even cancelled its January 12 meeting with the Samajwadi Party (SP) to discuss seat-sharing in Uttar Pradesh, as state Congress leaders were hoping for Mayawati to make an announcement in their favour on her 68th birthday.
But addressing the media in Lucknow, the former UP chief minister claimed the BSP’s experience with alliances has not been “beneficial”. “We suffer more losses,” she said. “Most of the parties want to ally with the BSP. But the BSP will fight the elections alone.” Citing the 2007 Vidhan Sabha election, when the BSP won 206 of the 403 assembly seats, Mayawati said it was the combined support of the Dalits, Muslims, tribals and other backward communities that had helped the party form a majority government. “We’ll maintain a distance with those who are casteist and communal, and we’ll not join any alliance,” the BSP chief added, even as she kept options open for a post-poll alliance.
The presser also saw Mayawati denying rumours of impending retirement, especially after she named her nephew Akash Anand as her “political successor” at the party’s national council meeting in December. “I want to clarify that it’s not the case,” she said. “I will continue to work towards strengthening the party.”
Over the following week, as Mayawati met her party leaders from Delhi, UP and Uttarakhand, she exhorted them to work hard to reverse the BSP’s downward trajectory. But for a party that has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, ‘Behenji’ and her cohort will have to pull off a miracle, especially if she sticks to her decision to go solo. For, whatever may have been her experience with alliances, her party’s performance in fact saw an improvement when she decided to join hands with bête noire Akhilesh Yadav’s SP ahead of the 2019 general election.
From having failed to open its account in 2014 amid a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) blitzkrieg, the BSP managed to corner 10 of the 38 seats it contested in 2019. But this Mahagathbandhan experiment didn’t last long. In 2022 came the real shocker, as the BSP was left with just one assembly seat, recording a 12.8 per cent vote share, the lowest in three decades.
Talking to india today, SP spokesperson Udaiveer Singh said his party knew all along that Mayawati would “not dare” to join an anti-BJP alliance. “Now, the Congress should also understand this,” he said. The Congress was hoping that the BSP’s entry into the INDIA bloc would consolidate the vote of the Dalits, who make up 20 per cent of the state’s population, and also prevent a three-way split of the vote of the Muslims, who account for 19 per cent of the population, between them and the SP.
With the SP being the largest opposition party in the state, Akhilesh was reportedly apprehensive about the BSP eating into his party’s space in the bloc. As has become apparent now, Mayawati, too, has no interest in playing second fiddle to anyone, even as the state Congress leaders are learnt to have approached the high command to intervene. SP insiders, on their part, claim that after Mayawati’s decision to go it alone, doors may now open for another Dalit leader—Chandrashekhar Azad. The Azad Samaj Party (ASP) founder himself wants to contest from Nagina—one of the 17 Lok Sabha seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) in UP—on an INDIA ticket.
But, in politics, it’s not over until it’s over. A section within the BSP, which is hopeful that Mayawati could still change her stand, points to a statement she made at her press conference. “There is time left for the election,” she had told the media. And much can change until then.
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