Ahead of 2024, Mayawati sets off on a solo adventure

Politically wounded and vulnerable, the BSP supremo refuses to abandon her unpredictable ways. Her recent poll moves are evidence of that

In April of 1999, Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee found himself in a pickle.

The AIADMK, led by its mercurial supremo J Jayalalitha, withdrew support to his government and the PM stared at a trust motion.

As the government sweated it out, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), led by Mayawati, threw a lifeline by announcing that it would abstain from voting.

On the day of the headcount, when Mayawati trooped into the Parliament House with her 5 MPs, BJP floor managers believed they had sewn up the numbers.

But when Speaker GMC Balayogi called for the BSP leader to speak, the ruling party knew something was amiss. And they were right. All BSP MPs voted to bring down the Vajpayee government by one vote — the narrowest margin of defeat in a confidence vote in Indian politics.

Twenty-five years since that political gut punch, it is still hard to get a read on the BSP and its leader, as they remain as unpredictable in their manoeuvres as in their formative years. Mayawati’s opponents have often dubbed it rank opportunism; party founder Kanshi Ram called it political compulsion.

Unsurprisingly, her positioning ahead of the big battle in 2024 has once again come under scrutiny.

The czarina of Dalit politics, who dazzled national politics by becoming the UP chief minister when she was 39 but is now strolling in the political wilderness due to successive poll setbacks, has consistently said that she would maintain equidistance from the NDA and the I.N.D.I.A alliance.

To make good on her word, in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, the BSP has aligned with a regional outfit Gondwana Gantantra Party, a local outfit with a support base amongst tribals.

In Rajasthan, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh, Mayawati plans a solo outing. If anything, the BSP throwing its hat in the ring cramps the Congress’ bid to emerge as the sole repository of Dalit votes. And the BJP is the vicarious gainer.

At the Mumbai meeting of I.N.D.I.A parties, NCP chief Sharad Pawar explained Mayawati’s absence by claiming that the BSP was in talks with the BJP.

With cases of alleged corruption still pending against her, there is a certain pattern in the way Mayawati has conducted her politics

Riding high on her 2007 election victory in UP, the BSP leader led the Opposition ranks in an effort to bring down the Manmohan Singh government after the withdrawal of support by the Left parties over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Six months later, when the Congress returned to power, she was the first one to extend support to the UPA from outside.

The BSP chief laid low for four years after the BJP's massive victory in 2014 but joined hands with her bete noire, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, just ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The experiment failed, and within hours of the poll results, she walked out of the alliance.

“Why would Mayawati go with the I.N.D.I.A alliance? She did this experiment in 2019 and it came a cropper,” said Virendra Nath Bhatt, a senior journalist based in Lucknow.

“The BJP has shattered the myth of the captive vote bank of the BSP and the SP by bringing in another element to social empowerment, that is economic empowerment of marginalised communities,” he added.

But as a political party, Mayawati now will have to do a lot more than just survive to fight another day.

In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, Mayawati decided to go alone and ended up with just one seat in the house of 403 members. For a party that installed a CM in UP in less than 10 years since its formation in 1984, the fall couldn’t have been more precipitous.

The BSP now is listless, bereft of ideas and a far cry from what founder Kanshi Ram envisaged it to be — a vehicle of political empowerment for marginalised communities, including Dalits, Muslims and most backward castes. Its support base has now shrunk to only one community — the Jatavs, who comprise 13 per cent of the electorate.

With powerful caste leaders having left, the party has been hollowed out, with only Mayawati left to brood over its slow demise.

A BSP leader and a former minister in the Mayawati government, who does not want to be identified, feels that most of the regional parties are fighting an existential battle in the face of BJP’s meteoric rise in national politics.

“And when the Election Commission blows the whistle for the general elections sometime in March next year, all of them would jump onto the I.N.D.I.A train — some would be seen boarding the guard's cabin, sleeper class, engine, or wherever they find space to fit in,” the leader said.

It is precisely the reason why the outcome of the five Assembly polls is crucial. The results would help the fence sitters to gauge which way the wind is blowing. Though knowing Mayawati and her body of work, one can be rest assured that surprises won’t cease.