Why BSP supremo Mayawati has lost interest in Lok Sabha polls

In the highly charged election stage, where parties and leaders leave no stone unturned to one-up rivals, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati seems to be making a calculated retreat from the race. If one goes by her recent decisions, Mayawati seems more focused on upsetting the applecart of the INDIA bloc of which Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress are a part in Uttar Pradesh than ensuring the victory of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidates at the hustings.,

While Mayawati’s erratic decisions are being attributed to a part of her strategy to strengthen her footing for the Assembly polls in 2027, it could prove immensely beneficial for the BJP.

Rallying forces, taking stock

It is said that instead of putting all her eggs in one basket, the BSP leader wants to reserve her resources and strength and regroup the party for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls in 2027.

The first and foremost indication of this came to light on Tuesday (May 7) when Mayawati took her nephew and political heir Akash Anand off the campaign for the ongoing Lok Sabha polls. She found him “immature” in just five months after designating him as the BSP’s national coordinator and her political successor.

Akash has been divested of all responsibilities given by the party till he gains “maturity”.

It is believed Akash’s lack of restraint and no-holds-barred attack on the BJP while campaigning for BSP’s Sitapur Lok Sabha candidate, Mahendra Singh Yadav, on April 28 enraged his aunt. Sitapur Police have lodged an FIR against him and others for hate speech and related misdemeanours.

The FIR said that Akash, in his speech delivered at a rally organized by the BSP at Sitapur’s Raja College campus, had called the BJP-led Centre, “a government of terrorists” while urging voters to greet representatives of other parties by hurling shoes at them.

It is interesting to note that no action was taken against Akash, either by Mayawati or state authorities over his barbs at Bhim Army chief and Azad Samaj Party candidate from Nagina, Chandrashekhar Azad. Mayawati views Azad and his moves with suspicion as he, too, tries to champion the Dalit cause, an issue that forms the foundation of her own party. The BSP also fears Azad, whose four-year-old party decided to contest the Lok Sabha polls with an eye on Dalit strongholds of Uttar Pradesh, will eat into her party’s vote share.

Stalling SP’s rise to power the chief motive

Mayawati’s loss of interest in the Lok Sabha polls also stems from her inability to hold her flock of MPs together. Some of her MPs recently crossed over to other parties while she showed the doors to a couple of them, including Kunwar Danish Ali. The latter is contesting the polls from Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha on a Congress ticket this time. The four-time chief minister also understands that to avoid desertions, she must assert herself at the state level and win the assembly polls.

The BSP suffered a serious drubbing in the Assembly polls of 2022. The party, which could muster only 13 per cent of the vote share, ended up getting a lone MLA getting elected that year. While the NDA polled 44 per cent of the votes, the SP, despite accounting for 37 per cent of the vote share along with its alliance partners, could not even reach the halfway mark in the 403-member assembly. The votes were obviously split with the BSP as well. So, for Mayawati, the consolation is that she could stall SP’s another ride to power in Uttar Pradesh.

While the BSP has contested the elections before 2019 in alliance with the SP, Mayawati refused to do so for the Lok Sabha polls this time, saying the tie-up never suited her party as the aligning party’s votes never got transferred to the BSP. But this goes against facts since BSP fought the 2014 General Elections alone, but ended up with no seat in Parliament. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the party had won 20 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state, contesting it as part of the Third Front Alliance.

It is thus no surprise that Akash was expected to train his guns more on SP, whom his aunt considers its arch rival, than the BJP.

Rather BJP than INDIA bloc

The BSP’s withdrawal of its candidate from the Jaunpur parliamentary seat to make the fight winnable for BJP is another sign that proves that winning the Lok Sabha polls is not on the priority list of the party.

In a move made overnight, Mayawati replaced jailed strongman Dhananjay Singh’s wife Shrikala Singh Reddy as the Jaunpur candidate with sitting MP Shyam Singh Yadav for the May 25 polls. The BJP candidate for this seat is former Maharashtra minister Kirpashankar Singh while SP has fielded Babu Singh Kushwaha.

The caste equations in the constituency were not in favour of the BJP candidate as both Kirpashankar and Shrikala wield immense clout among the Thakur electorate. The two could have cut each other’s votes. However, Yadav’s nomination changed the game as he may attract some of SP’s Yadav votes that could have otherwise gone en-bloc to Kushwaha.

Varanasi mathematics

The third and last indication of Mayawati’s intent to cut INDIA coalition votes is visible in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi. The BSP has fielded a Muslim candidate, Athar Jamal Lari, from Varanasi to take on Modi.

The constituency has a large number of Muslim voters whose votes could well get divided between Lari and Congress candidate Ajay Rai when the voting takes place in the seventh phase on June 1. This will help Modi romp home easily and maybe with as huge a margin as has been the case in the 2014 and 2019 polls when he was ahead of his nearest rivals by lakhs of votes.

Why LS poll doesn’t matter for Mayawati

So the question is why Mayawati has neither joined the Opposition line-up against the BJP, nor is she impressed by it.

For the answer, one has to look at her habitual belief in the prescience of politics rather than going by its immediate exigencies, as was the case with her nephew Akash. She was elected as the Uttar Pradesh chief minister thrice but could not complete the full five-year term until 2007, when she came to power with enough MLAs to see her through until the end of her term.

This she may well be longing to cherish again, ignoring the temptation to make a difference in the Lok Sabha polls.