She was trying to claw back to power in Uttar Pradesh this time around with a Dalit-Muslim combination, but the results have shocked Bahujan Samajwadi Party chief Mayawati, raising questions about the political future of her party.
The BSP was trounced in the Assembly elections with just about 19 seats; the party retained its core votes in good measure but was not able to move beyond that. The party was winning about 22% votes, just above the Dalit population of the State but 17 percentage points below the BJP’s vote share.
No minority gains
While it gave 100 seats to Muslims, the BSP does not seem to have been able to attract a large chunk of the minority votes which accounts for 19% of the State’s population. The minority vote seems largely to have gone to the SP-Congress alliance.
Explaining why Ms. Mayawati fell short despite having given fair representation to most castes and communities among her candidates, Vivek Kumar, professor with the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at JNU, who specialises in the Dalit movement in Uttar Pradesh, told The Hindu that the BSP failed to reach out enough to some small backward castes that have moved towards the BJP.
“With most backward castes accessing power in the recent past, their aspirations also rose higher. The MBCs and Ati-Dalits were looking for more, but the BSP could not specifically capture their imagination despite having offered the ticket to all communities and castes.
Rethinking must be done by the BSP,” Dr Kumar said. Clearly, the BSP has lost the most backward castes that had gravitated towards it in some measure in 2007. Maurya leader Swami Prasad Maurya, for instance, moved towards the BJP.
