The formalisation of the BSP-SP electoral alliance ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls marks a remarkable departure from Mayawati’s policy so far of doing it alone in both national and state elections.
It is true that the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had joined hands with the Samajwadi Party (SP) in 1993 to vanquish the formidable BJP juggernaut in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, and a few years later entered into a poll pact with the Congress for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 1996. But both these pre-poll alliances were forged by party founder Kanshi Ram, with his Dalit firebrand protégé pointedly kept out of negotiations.
Indeed, ever since she has been in charge of the BSP, Behenji has steadfastly shunned such alliances as disadvantageous to the BSP and its mission.
As a matter of fact, she had often reiterated over the past two decades that the BSP lost out big time in such electoral collaborations, pointing out that while she was able to transfer her core voter support to poll partners, the latter invariably failed to return the favour. The BSP supremo also felt that any outreach to social groups other than her own Dalit community was better done directly like she has done with Brahmins, certain backward castes and Muslims in the past, rather than through alliances with other political parties.
It is, therefore, all the more significant that Mayawati, at her press conference announcing her party’s alliance with the SP, went out of her way to assert that this was not only geared to defeating the BJP in the coming Lok Sabha polls, but will continue till the state Assembly polls three years later and beyond.
While the immediate impact of the BSP-SP alliance on this year’s national elections has not surprisingly grabbed the headlines, it is also important to examine the larger long term implications of the two regional behemoths of India’s most populous and politically crucial state giving up their traditional rivalry and joining hands.
A Build-Up Full of Defeats
Mayawati’s dramatic turnaround in electoral strategy has come in the wake of a series of setbacks in successive polls over the past decade after her dramatic victory in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls that made her chief minister with a full majority.
Her slide downwards started with a disappointing performance in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, when the Congress dashed her prime ministerial ambitions by winning handsomely followed by her own ouster from power two years later by a resurgent Samajwadi Party led by young Akhilesh Yadav.
In recent years, the defeats have turned into debacles with the BSP completely wiped out in the 2014 national polls by the Modi juggernaut and reduced to a mere rump in the state assembly after the 2017 elections.
This period has also seen the collapse of Behenji’s social engineering initiatives that had at one point promised to make her the foremost political leader in the country.
The daring alliance between her Dalits right at the bottom of the social pyramid and Brahmins quite at the top that swept her to power in 2007, always a fragile arrangement came horribly unstuck within a few years.
A subsequent political gambit in the last Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh to hijack Muslim minority votes from the SP spectacularly failed. The competition over the minority vote bank between the BSP and the SP, which entered into a hasty alliance with the Congress to stop the erosion of its Muslim vote bank, only helped the BJP to polarise Hindu voters in its favour and score a record victory.
An Alliance to Save Herself?
It is this drastic plunge in her political fortunes, threatening her very survival, that has clearly led to a fundamental change in Mayawati’s electoral strategy. Last year, for the first time, she experimented with pre-poll alliances, but outside of Uttar Pradesh, with the JD (S) in Karnataka and with Congress rebel Ajit Jogi’s faction in Chattisgarh. Interestingly, neither of them met with much success with the BSP winning just one seat in Karnataka and a couple in Chattisgarh.
However, the alliance with the SP appears to be on much firmer footing with far greater potential for success. Mayawati’s own base and organisation in Uttar Pradesh unlike in other parts of the country remains quite formidable despite the setbacks of the past decade. More importantly, reports from the ground suggest that the cadre of the BSP and SP are working in unison largely because their respective constituencies of Dalits, Yadavs and, of course, Muslims are very keen to make this alliance a success because of the common threat of the Yogi Adityanath regime with its purported bias towards upper castes particularly his own Thakur community.
“The reason why this alliance will work because it is not just dependent on parleys at the top level between Behenji and Akhilesh, but because it is driven by a desperation among Dalits, Yadavs, Muslims as well as several other social segments to get rid of the BJP regime both in New Delhi and in Lucknow,” confided a veteran Dalit activist on the phone from Lucknow.
However, the growing bonhomie between Mayawati and Akhilesh evident at their joint press conference is also a major factor behind the unlikely political alliance taking off despite so much bad blood between the two parties in the past. One major difference is that unlike his father Mulayam Singh, who detested Mayawati, who too hated him particularly after his goons terrorised her in the infamous Lucknow guest house incident, Akhilesh has assiduously wooed her over the past many months. This deference to the veteran Dalit leader by the young Yadav chieftain was on full display at the press meet in Lucknow with latter going out of his way to pay the former compliments even though by mentioning the Lucknow guest house incident not once but twice she underlined that she had not forgotten the sins of his father’s and the older Yadav clan.
Although there relationship is bound to have its ups and downs, there are two reasons it could last beyond the Lok Sabha polls. The first is that the party cadre and supporters of the BSP and SP are bound to stick together as long as the threat of Yogi Adityanath remains at the state level. Secondly, if indeed Mayawati does get an important post at the national level in the event of non-BJP coalition government going to power she may well choose to keep Akhilesh in charge in Uttar Pradesh rather than risk promoting a rival Dalit leader of her party.
(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 them.)
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