Mayawati’s mayajaal

BSP supremo Mayawati was in a take-no-prisoners mood on Wednesday. Her rejection of an alliance with the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh was premised on a lengthy six-page formulation. The entire purpose was two-fold: draw a clear distinction between the Congress and the BSP to keep the faithful in the fold as well as differentiate with the local Congress leaderships that had put a spoke in the alliance and the Rahul-Sonia high command which, she presumes, is in favour of a BSP-Congress pact. Her diatribe against Digvijay Singh aside, what went wrong in the alliance?

Mayawati claims the BSP was offered a mere 10 seats in Rajasthan (total 200), 15 to 20 seats in MP (230 seats) and five-six seats in Chhattisgarh (60 seats). A dispassionate appraisal would show that the Congress does not require the BSP in Rajasthan at all. In Madhya Pradesh, the BSP mustered 7 per cent of the vote and finished in the first two positions in 14 Assembly seats. This holds more or less true in Chhattisgarh as well. Seen in this light, the Congress offer appears on a par with the BSP’s strength. Mayawati may not have taken up the Congress offer to bargain harder and offer herself as a PM candidate for the combined Opposition (BSP already has pacts with INLD in Haryana and JD(S) in Karnataka).  

Unless the Damocles’ sword of a review petition in the apex court is not weighing on her, Mayawati appears to be treading on the razor’s edge. Mayawati will lose her bargaining power for 2019 if the BSP performs poorly in the three states and Dalit youth leader Chandrashekhar makes a splash in UP. She still has an option in UP — aligning with an incipient party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s brother — and expanding it into a pan-India third front. But with time left for the grand prize in 2019, Mayawati at this stage perhaps wants to show she should not be taken for granted. The window left open by not attacking Sonia-Rahul is an indicator.