 "Bahujan Samaj Party Chief Mayawati. Photo: PTI")
It is intriguing that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and income-tax department have singled out for probe a bank account of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and another belonging to Mayawati’s brother Anand Kumar. The move comes barely a month and a half before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
Predictably, Mayawati accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of an anti-Dalit mindset. She also thanked them for ensuring her victory in the forthcoming elections. She said the last time she was hounded in a similar fashion was in 2007, and that helped her party win a majority in the UP Assembly election that year. Mayawati indicated the probe on her party and family members would help consolidate her support base.
If Mayawati’s press conference in Lucknow on Tuesday morning wasn’t enough, two senior ministers in the Modi government held separate press conferences in New Delhi a little later. First, Ram Vilas Paswan, and then Ravi Shankar Prasad, said it was unfortunate that Mayawati was trying to use her Dalit identity as a shield. However, their comments on Mayawati lacked the aggression that is increasingly reserved by BJP leaders for Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, or Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.
The ED move begs the question why BSP accounts have been singled out, and not of other parties as well? It should also be obvious to BJP, or to anybody who has studied voter behaviour of BSP’s support base, that Mayawati’s supporters are unlikely to leave her if she were being investigated for corruption. That she alone is being investigated gives credence to her claim that she is being victimised for being a Dalit, at least among her supporters.
To Dalits, as well as to Muslims that she is trying to reach out to, Mayawati would come across as one leader taking on the Modi government. Behenji, as she is known in her party circles, has been virulently critical of the government’s note ban decision. In contrast, the Samajwadi Party leadership has been relatively muted in its criticism of note ban. All of this should endear her to the Dalit and Muslim voters, which comprise 40 per cent of the electorate.
Mayawati claimed the probe was ordered on Monday night because in the morning she had asked Muslims of UP to be wary of BJP’s conspiracies, and that she “spilt the beans” that the SP-Congress alliance was awaiting the BJP green signal.
Until now, BJP, including party President Amit Shah, had maintained that Mayawati’s BSP wasn’t even in the contest in UP; the contest was between BJP and SP. Why then try boost her image?
Could it be that BJP is wary of a potential SP-Congress alliance? Or is the reason deeper, and has to do with a post-UP poll scenario where BJP is number three but in the position to help Mayawati form the government?
Moreover, an SP-Congress victory is also likely to strengthen the Congress on the national stage, just as the Congress’ alliance in Bihar with Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal helped it find some vigour. It’s the Congress that the BJP would need to beat in large parts of the country if it were to retain power in 2019.
The BJP, however, would still like to win more than the 50 seats it holds in the current UP Assembly. This would help it keep near the majority mark in the electoral college that will elect the new President of India in July 2017.
