BSP has Muslim UP chief: Mayawati plays old politics of checks & balances

Mayawati never fails to surprise. In her chequered political career, spanning more than three decades, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president has loved treading the path less travelled. Now, when the chips are down, Mayawati sprang a surprise earlier this month by appointing a Muslim, Munaquad Ali, as the chief of the Uttar Pradesh unit of her party.

This is the first time that the BSP has picked someone from the minority community to lead the party in the state. The rival regional heavyweight, Samajwadi Party (SP), the self-appointed custodian of the welfare of the minorities, has never appointed any leader from the community to head the state unit.

Concurrently, Mayawati had also re­placed the BSP’s leader in Lok Sabha, Kunwar Danish Ali, by a first-time MP, Shyam Singh Yadav, who belongs to the Other Backward Classes. Ali, who had joined the BSP in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls after deserting the Janata Dal (Se­cular), was removed purportedly because he did not toe the party’s line on Article 370, wherein the BSP broadly supported the stand of the Narendra Modi government.

Nonetheless, the sudden rejig in the party’s hierarchy, ahead of the by-polls in 13 Assembly seats in UP later this year, has signalled an astute strategic manoeuvre by the Dalit czarina to test the waters before the state elections in 2022.

The deployment of a Muslim and a backward leader in key posts is being seen at keeping these communities in good humour, especially at a time when the political space in UP has been cornered by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over successive elections since 2014.

Together the Muslims and the backwards comprise nearly 60 per cent of the UP population, and as such play a vital role in ensuring the winnability of any political party or combination.

Since the much-hyped pre-poll alliance between the SP and BSP failed to click at the elections, Mayawati is now compelled to play all her cards. In the Lok Sabha polls this year, the BSP fielded six Muslim candidates, of whom three won. The party contested 38 of the 80 constituencies in UP and won 10 against none in 2014.

“Mayawati is becoming desperate because the BSP core vote bank has started deserting her. These fresh appointments should be seen as experiments trying to keep her flock intact and to see if they work in elections,” Ambedkar Mahasabha President Lalji Nirmal, a strong critic of Mayawati, said. 

He is also chairperson of UP Scheduled Caste Finance and Development Corporation.

He said Mayawati had long forsaken the path of the ‘Ambedkar Mission’ and was pursuing personal interests of controlling the party and surreptitiously handing over its reins to her family members.

Meanwhile, Mayawati has upped the ante against other opposition parties like the Congress and SP to give a strong message to the electorate of the BSP’s potency and relevance. 

For example, she has charged the two parties with shedding crocodile tears on the Sonbhadra massacre, in which 10 tribals were shot dead last month by armed assailants allegedly owing allegiance to a local land mafia. Her position was that these parties should strive to restore agricultural land titles to tribals.

Priyanka Gandhi, Congress general secretary in charge of eastern UP, visited Sonbhadra tw­ice to meet the victims’ family members even as the party has handed ov­er a compensation che­q­ue of Rs 10 lakh to the kin of each of the 10 dece­a­sed. In contrast, the res­ponse of the BSP has been only cosmetic, ranging from posts on social me­d­ia and issuing press releases castigating the Yogi Adityanath government.

Earlier Mayawati had sacked the BSP election coordinators in six states and state presidents of two states after the poll debacle. 

“Mayawati knows the BSP has a tough road ahead. Since she had to remove Ali from the post of the party’s leader in the Lok Sabha for not ali­gning with the BSP line, Mayawati balanced her act by appointing a Muslim leader as the UP chief,” politi­c­al commentator Hemant Tiwari said.

He said Mayawati was hoping to create a caste and community equation before the polls, yet it became difficult for the party to galvanise the voters of these communities.

“Although Mayawati has appointed a Yadav as the party’s Lok Sabha chief, she publicly alleged that the community did not vote for the BSP in the Lok Sabha polls, leading to the defeat of her candidates,” he said, adding, the party’s pro-BJP stance on Article 370 could also earn her the ire of the minority community.