Don’t write off BSP yet

Shahira Naim in Lucknow

The Bahujan Samaj Party national president, Mayawati, not only refuses to play the power game by the established rules of the well-entrenched political elite, but also shows the courage to throw the political rule book out of the window. The BSP, which has  a strong base in Uttar Pradesh, has footprints in many states. Yet, it is rarely attributed the stature it deserves as a national party. 

The BSP does not have a single MP in the Lok Sabha and just four MPs in the Rajya Sabha. But it does have 19 MLAs in Uttar Pradesh, four in Madhya Pradesh, three in Rajasthan and one each in Chattisgarh, Haryana and Jharkhand. Recently, N Mahesh, its only MLA in Karnataka, has become the party’s first minister outside Uttar Pradesh, since the party’s inception in 1984.

 The BSP supremo, popularly known as Behenji, derives  her moral strength from the fact that even in 2014, despite not winning a single seat, her party had the third-largest share of votes behind the BJP and the Congress.

This is despite the popular belief that the BJP’s landslide win was due to its successful social engineering in UP as it wooed away the non-Jatav Dalits from the BSP and non-Yadav OBCs from the SP. Similarly, in 2017 UP Assembly elections, the BSP may have won only 19 seats, but its vote share was intact at 22.2 per cent, more than the Samajwadi Party’s vote share of 21.8 per cent with which it managed to win 47 seats.

By thinking out of the box, Mayawati has forced her political foes, political pundits and a stunned, what she terms as “manuvadi,” media, to sit up and take her more seriously. The party, however, remains an enigma. Neither its leader nor its elected representatives and cadres are accessible to the media. 

In spite of being insular, Mayawati can’t be denied her position in the Indian politics. Her support has been credited for the sweeping win of the opposition candidates in UP’s Gorakhpur, Phulpur and even Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpor Assembly by-elections recently, thereby virtually changing the political landscape of the nation.

Just about time 

The BSP contested 18 seats in Karnataka in alliance with HD Deve Gowda’s Janta Dal (Secular). Prior to this, it was way back in 1994 that the party won the Bidar seat.

It is rumoured that Mayawati played a crucial role in cobbling together the JD(S) and the Congress alliance, once it became clear that the BJP did not have the numbers. The photograph of the bonding of otherwise reticent Sonia Gandhi and Mayawati at the swearing-in ceremony of JD(S) chief ministerial candidate H D Kumaraswamy on May 23, 2018 is evidence of the changing stature of the BSP in the future electoral alliances to check the BJP’s surge.

Succeeding in keeping the BJP out of power in Karnataka, the Congress has almost finalised a pre-poll alliance with the BSP in MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, which go to the polls soon. The BSP has an average four per cent vote share in these states. However, it is not sufficient to guarantee seats for the party, but enough to upset the BJP’s applecart. At the same time, with the catchy slogan “Dalit, pichde or kisan, banayenge ab nayi pehchaan”, the BSP has entered into an alliance with Haryana’s Indian National Lok Dal for the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

Need of the hour

It’s important to understand that why an insulated party like the BSP has suddenly opened to the concept of alliances. On more than one occasions, Behenji has expressed her displeasure at  how alliances have left her party short changed. She says that her disciplined cadre always transfers its votes en bloc to whichever party and candidate she instructs them to. The gesture, however, she claims, is never reciprocated in the same measure by the voters of alliance parties due to the deep-rooted anti-Dalit mindset.

There appears to be a sudden rush of sorts in the Congress and other regional parties like the SP, the INLD and the JD(S) to enter into an alliance with the BSP to defeat the saffron party by consolidating the non-BJP OBC and Dalit votes. The efficacy of the arrangement would establish the sustainability of these alliances beyond the Vidhan Sabha and for the Lok Sabha Elections of 2019.

Till now, the BSP has not contested any bypoll  in UP. However, earlier this year, Mayawati set aside bitter memories of the 23-year-old ‘Guest House episode’ when the SP workers attacked her, ending the SP-BSP alliance government and turning Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav into sworn enemies. 

Being at war with the SP made her seek an unlikely partner in the BJP, with which she thrice formed a government in UP, denting her anti-BJP credentials forever. 

The generational change in the SP and the need to remain relevant in the heartland politics forced Mayawati to ask her supporters to ensure the victory of the SP candidate in Phulpur and Gorakhpur. In both these constituencies, BSP workers went for door-to-door campaigning of the SP candidates, which resulted in their historic victory on the seats vacated by no less than Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. 

In Kairana, however, she made no such appeal. She rather made it clear that her party was not participating in the bypoll. The Dalit voters voted for Rashtriya Lok Dal candidate Tabassum Hasan, supported by the SP and the Congress and many other smaller parties.

Young influencers 

The emergence of young Dalit leaders like Chandrashekhar in UP and Jignesh Mevani in Gujarat, appears to be the biggest challenge for Mayawati.

Her brand of politics, as spelt out by her mentor and BSP founder Kanshi Ram, is, changing equations by acquiring the master key of power by any means. That is exactly what she has been doing.

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Keeping dynasty apolitical

• It was after being re-elected as the BSP national president for the second consecutive term on August 29, 2006 that Mayawati had first mentioned about a successor.  
• At a public rally in Lucknow on July 31, 2008, Mayawati announced that she had chosen her Dalit successor who was 20 years younger. The name, she said, would be declared at the right time.  
• After the reversal in the UP Assembly elections in 2017, Mayawati appointed her younger brother-businessman Anand Kumar as BSP's national vice-president. In fact, when Mayawati visited Shabbirpur after the violence on May 23 last year, Akash, Anand’s son had accompanied her.
• Better sense seems to have prevailed. During the BSP national executive meeting in Lucknow on May 26, Mayawati amended the BSP constitution to bar the close relatives of party’s national president, including her, from holding organisational posts.

UP Vidhan Sabha best performance in 2007

• Seats won 206 of 403, vote share 30.43 per cent
• 2012: Vote share drops by mere 5 per cent to 25.95 per cent, but seats reduced by 126 from 206 in 2007 to 80
• 2017: Vote share still 22.24 per cent, but seats further reduced to 19