UP polls 2017: Maya's fortunes hinge on winning reserved seats from SP, BJP

In many ways, Uttar Pradesh  2017 is not just a survival game for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) but also a matter of pride for party matriarch Mayawati. An indicator of whether Mayawati will become the next chief minister (CM) of UP depends on whether she can win in most of the 55 new reserved constituencies created after the delimitation exercise in the state in 2008. Before delimitation in 2008, UP had 89 reserved constituencies. Now there are 85. Furthermore, in the 30 constituencies that continued to be reserved post 2008, Mayawati would have to make big strides to reclaim the ground she ceded to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

That may be hard, but not impossible. The BSP has not been able to recover from the effects of the 2008 delimitation exercise that not just reduced the number of reserved constituencies by four, but also made the new ones less concentrated with Dalits who form the party’s core voter base. 

In 2012 assembly elections, in the 55 new reserved constituencies, the BSP managed to win just 11. Mayawati’s biggest challenge will be to uproot the SP from these new reserved constituencies. To do so, she may have to win most of 30 seats which the SP won in 2012 in the newly-created reserved assembly constituencies. What makes her job harder is that before she could make a mark on these newly-reserved constituencies, the BJP had already made rapid inroads into them.

Riding on the so-called ‘Modi wave’, the BJP won a significant number of assembly constituencies in the reserved parliamentary seats in the 2014 elections. The immense impact the BJP had in uprooting the Samajwadi Party from the Dalit seats can be seen in Misrikh, a reserved parliamentary constituency with three reserved assembly seats. 32% of the district’s population is Dalit. That’s higher than the state average. In 2014, the BJP won three out of the five constituencies in the Misrikh parliamentary seat. In two, the party’s candidate won more than 50% of the votes.  But what should give Mayawati hope is that in two of the three reserved assembly constituencies in Misrikh, the party came out on top. The BJP seemed more like a threat in the general elections. In the state elections, it is the SP that has completely dominated reserved constituencies. Mayawati’s chances of reclaiming her core constituencies stand greatly enhanced with the internal feud in the SP, the anti-incumbency factor and the waning of the so called ‘Modi effect’ in the state.

MAYAWATI LOOKS TO REGAIN DALIT VOTE
Mayawati also faces an uphill task of reconquering lost ground in the remaining 30 core Dalit seats whose status remained unchanged post 2008. Mayawati’s party now has just 3 of them. In districts like Bijnor, Moradabad & Jaunpur the SP has completely displaced the BSP from its reserved constituencies. In better times (read 2007), Mayawati’s party had won 20 out of these 30 seats. The SP’s alliance with the Congress could also make the task more difficult for Mayawati in the reserved seats. This is exemplified in Rae Bareilly, the Gandhi family’s pocket borough. Both reserved seats here – Bachhrawan and Salon- were wrested by the SP from the Congress in 2012 assembly elections. With both parties joining hands, the possibility of undercutting each other's votes has been avoided. Half a dozen seats won’t make much of a difference to Congress fortunes. If the election were to go down to the wire it certainly would impact Mayawati.

The BSP matriarch has served only one full term as the CM of India’s most electorally crucial state between 2007 to 2012. That’s when she swept 70% of the reserved seats in the state. But after the ECI changed the electoral contours of UP, her party has been unable to restore itself to its former glory. The crucial UP polls could well decide whether this would be Mayawati’s redemption song.