What is going to be Mayawati’s future in 2024

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has finally thrown its hat in the political battlefield for the 18th Lok Sabha, for which the process has already begun. After lying low for quite some time and making her presence felt only through occasional tweets and press releases, party supremo Mayawati finally chose to announce its candidates for the bulk of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, while the remaining are in the pipeline.

Four-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati was a force to reckon with in the country’s most populous state of UP, but over the past three years or so, she started fading away into political oblivion.

How the party remained dormant for three years had led many to believe that Mayawati had chosen to withdraw herself from active politics. But why would she do that? Her silence on major issues and many of her statements largely directed against Congress or the Samajwadi Party led people to wonder if she was trying to indirectly benefit the BJP.

Speculation was rife that of the Damocles sword hanging over her neck, perhaps she was compelled to play ‘Team B’ to the ruling party. With CBI still keeping cases of ‘disproportionate assets’ (initiated during the UPA regime) alive against her, it would be no surprise if the current ruling dispensation was using the opportunity to take recourse to arm-twisting – which was why Mayawati started playing to the BJP tune.

Finally, when she came out of her cocoon to announce candidates for the election, the message went around that even as Mayawati was down, she was still not out. It was another matter that her party stood badly marginalized after 2019 when it managed to win 10 Lok Sabha seats in UP.

The miracle of the sudden rise from 0 to 10 seats was attributed to the party’s alliance with the Samajwadi Party. However, it was ironic that in the bargain Samajwadi Party remained a loser, by falling to just 5 seats. And that was understood to be because SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav ensured the complete transfer of their party vote to BSP, while Mayawati ensured that her party’s vote did not get transferred to SP.

The speed with which Mayawati took a 180-degree turn and lambasted SP made it loud and clear that her intent was perhaps only to settle old scores with SP, for what Mulayam Singh Yadav had allegedly done to her way back in 1995. SP goons had then attacked Mayawati and BSP leaders in Lucknow’s State Guest House, shortly after Mayawati announced withdrawal of support to the then Mulayam government.

However, what followed after 2019 speaks volumes of BSP’s tragedy. The party could not even open its account at the 2022 state assembly election in UP, which has as many as 403 seats. That left Mayawati further demoralized, following which the party started disintegrating. Several party leaders crossed over to other parties, including BJP, Congress as well as SP.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it a point to win over a large section of the BSP supporters. They found it convenient to find an anchor in Modi at a time when Mayawati’s ship appeared to be sinking. Mayawati, on whom a large chunk of Dalits relied heavily for their future, had started withdrawing herself from the political scene.

Eventually, in a caste-ridden Uttar Pradesh, today she is left with just her core vote bank of ‘Jatav’ Dalits, while other sections of Dalits and a chunk of extreme backwards marched off for greener pastures. BSP founder, the late Kanshi Ram was responsible for bringing under the BSP umbrella a large chunk of the extreme OBCs in addition to Dalits, who were the party’s core base.

But with Mayawati turning complacent and indifferent, they became easy prey for rival parties, who went about poaching them. While SP also succeeded in bringing some of them over to its side, there is no doubt that BJP became the biggest beneficiary of this transition. And soon an upper caste-dominated BJP was suddenly turned into a haven for the otherwise neglected extreme backwards – thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political jugglery and smart wooing skills.

These developments have further reduced the BSP to just a party of ‘Jatav’ Dalits. Even though it might be rather late in the day, Mayawati is busy trying to make a loose effort to expand her party base by awarding Lok Sabha tickets to a good number of Muslims and Brahmins. It was this ‘social engineering’ of adding a section of Brahmins to her party fold that had earned her rich dividends in 2007, when she rode on to power in UP, entirely on her own strength for the first time. Her three earlier short-lived stints as chief minister came only with BJP support.

Widely accused of allocating party tickets only for a price, it is still being wondered whether BSP’s independent entry (without being a part of either NDA or INDIA bloc) was intended to put the party back on the rail or with some other design in mind. For all you know, besides serving her alleged purpose of filling her coffers, her Muslim or Brahmin candidates could also indirectly assist the BJP by digging into the votes of the INDIA opposition alliance.