Revolt in BSP follows electoral decline

Mayawati

Former Bahujan Samaj Party zonal co-ordinator and sitting Rajya Sabha MP Jugul Kishore’s accusations against party supremo Mayawati on Sunday, charging her with “selling” Assembly and parliamentary ticket, comes close on the heels of a revolt by a slew of senior BSP leaders.

Signalling a growing disillusionment with the leadership, it comes in the wake of the BSP’s rapid electoral decline not just in its key bastion of Uttar Pradesh but across north India, with its Dalit and most backward base being largely swallowed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Senior BSP sources told

The Hindu that unless the party’s decline is rapidly arrested through a return to its roots, the next Assembly polls could well be a BJP-Samajwadi Party face-off — in which it would be advantage BJP — with the BSP on the margins. For, while the SP, they say, may hope to retain its traditional Yadav-Muslim vote base, the BJP can win — as it did in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls — not just the votes of the upper castes but also those of the MBCs and Dalits, once with the BSP, thanks equally to the Hindutva wave and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s projection as an OBC.

The sources are also concerned that the BJP, now in power at the Centre, will keep Ms Mayawati busy with the cases of corruption she has been named in.

In last year’s Lok Sabha polls, the BSP crashed to zero seats and 19.6 per cent of the votes in Uttar Pradesh in the general elections: in 2009, the BSP got 27.42 per cent of the votes and 20 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the State.

While the last couple of months have seen the exit of former MPs Dara Singh Chauhan, Ramashankar Rajbhar and Akhilesh Das, Mr. Kishore’s outburst is particularly significant. One of BSP founder Kanshiram’s lieutenants, he has been part of the party and the larger Dalit movement since 1984. He built the party in eastern U.P., going “door to door, village to village” over 30 years. On Sunday, he alleged that the reasons for the party’s dipping performance was that its Dalit mission had been put on the back burner, with the focus shifting to a “money mission.”

Mr. Chauhan’s case is the next most important. Expelled a week ago on December 29, on charges of “indiscipline” and “anti-party activities”, he belongs to the most backward caste of Nooniyas. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1996 and again in 2000 before winning a Lok Sabha seat in 2009: by then, he had won Ms Mayawati’s confidence enough to be named Leader of the BSP’s parliamentary wing in the Lower House.