Mayawati looking to recast party template, revive her old social alliance

In 2007, Newsweek magazine had profiled Mayawati, then Uttar Pradesh (UP) chief minister, as among eight global women leaders who had broken the glass ceiling despite all odds.

The honour wasn’t astray, though.

In the summer of that year, Mayawati had marshalled her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to victory in the UP Assembly polls by winning 206 seats in the 403-seat Vidhan Sabha.

The BSP topped the vote percentage tally with more than a 30 per cent share. She had crafted the party’s new “social engineering” template, combining its staple Dalit-Muslim constituency with the Brahmins to sew up a formidable “sarv-samaj” social alliance in the complex caste calculus of UP.

The party’s core values were tweaked to fabricate a larger social coalition beyond the Dalit spectrum, which helped Mayawati become chief minister of the country’s most populous and politically crucial state for a record fourth term (2007-12).

Cut to the 2022 UP Assembly polls, the BSP barely managed to win a single seat with its vote share dwindling to 12.8 per cent. The decline in the party’s electoral fortune has been thick and fast; from 206 seats in 2007 to 80 in 2012 to 19 in 2017, and one now.

Considering that the BSP had won 10 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 parliamentary elections in UP by cornering 19.3 per cent of the vote, the decline is steep and humiliating for Mayawati, who was once reckoned invincible in the state’s political firmament.

At one point, she was among the frontrunners for the prime minister’s post if the domestic coalition politics chessboard turned favourable to her.

Nonetheless, the abysmal performance in the latest electoral battle has forced a rethink in the BSP to revert to its original mould of catering for the aspirations of the Dalits and other deprived sections, including minorities.

This effectively means the party, founded by Kanshi Ram primarily as a political arm of his social empowerment movement, will rededicate itself to the same ideology ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, which are just two years away.

In this context, the recent sacking of two prominent Brahmin leaders of the party — former UP cabinet minister Nakul Dubey and Anil Pandey — although on grounds of “anti-party activities and indiscipline”, has sent a strong message to the cadre about the course of action.

Besides, a few leaders who had been expelled from the party or those who had quit are being re-inducted. Some of them are former UP minister Mukesh Jatav, Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali, Ramprasad Pradhan, and former legislator Wahab Chaudhary.

Guddu Jamali has been nominated to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha poll from Azamgarh. The seat fell vacant following the resignation of sitting member and Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav, who was elected to the UP Assembly from Karhal in Mainpuri district.

Similarly, office-bearers in some places have been replaced with leaders of the Dalit or Muslim communities. More such action is expected.

The erstwhile template of the BSP was rooted in its unflinching support for the Dalit community, which is estimated at 22 per cent of the state’s population. Together with the Muslims, the party’s vote bank had expanded to over 30 per cent at its peak.

However, after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, which saw the emergence of the “Modi wave”, the non-Jatav Dalits gradually gravitated towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Jatavs, a sub-caste of the Dalits, comprise nearly 13 per cent of the 22 per cent of the Dalit community in UP.

Social scientist A P Tiwari said the BSP was desperately looking at re-engineering its electoral formula. The party has started sending implicit and explicit signals by sacking some leaders and anointing others in key organisational posts, according to him.

“While Mayawati is seeking to realign the BSP to its original template, yet the party would like to accommodate the Brahmins too in its canvas.”

Meanwhile, a senior BSP leader lamented the Bahujan movement “is passing through a difficult phase” and unless sincere efforts were made soon, it would be rather impossible for the party to reclaim its glory.

“The BJP has appropriated our formula of harmonising with the Dalit and the downtrodden while we (BSP) have confined ourselves to AC rooms and armchair discussion. It is high time we returned to the founding principles of the BSP movement to win the confidence of our cadre once again,” he added.

Interestingly, Mayawati had tried to experiment by joining hands with the SP, her bitter rival, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Although the BSP doubled its tally to 10 seats, the projections by pollsters about the potential of the SP-BSP combine to dislodge the BJP in UP failed miserably. Later, the parting of the two coalition partners was acrimonious.

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi earlier this month said the grand old party had proposed an alliance with Mayawati and even offered her the UP CM’s post, but she did not respond to the proposal. Mayawati denied this with a caustic reply. However, this shows she is still considered a force to reckon with.