As UP gears up for polls, Mayawati watches from the margins

Uttar Pradesh is in the grip of poll fever. Yatras, inaugurations, announcements, incendiary speeches: it’s all happening in the country’s most populous state as it inches closer to the crucial Assembly polls, one that the BJP wants badly to win.

Amid all the noise, a crucial player in the state is missing in action: Mayawati. The BSP supremo has not been seen during campaigning, prompting Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah to take a dig at her saying she was “afraid”.

While there is much speculation on the reasons for her vanishing act, political observers are wondering: is this the end of the road for Behenji? Will the BSP ever make a comeback in UP?

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The BSP's Brahmin face and Mayawati's key poll strategist Satish Chandra Mishra recently claimed that the party will perform better than the 2007 state polls, which it had won with a massive mandate. But facts tell a different story.

The party has decided to go it alone for the upcoming Assembly polls, but the solo march appears pregnant with problems rather than possibilities. What adds to the confusion is the near total silence in the BSP camp with regard to campaigning even as rivals the BJP and SP have hit the roads with 'Jan Vishwas Yatras' and 'Vijay Rath Yatras' across the state.

The BSP is not all quiet. It is holding ‘Brahmin Bhaichara’ and ‘Budhijeevi’ (intellectual) conferences; it has added youth firepower to its armour through Mayawati's nephew Akash Anand, who has an MBA from London and is the son of her brother Anand Kumar, and Kapil Mishra, son of Satish Chandra Mishra.

These moves have given it some traction on social media and among youths, but poll battles are not entirely won on social media. At the moment, it looks like a straight contest between the ruling BJP and the main Opposition Samajwadi Party, with the BSP and the Congress watching from the sidelines.

In a reflection of the grim state of affairs, the party has been leaking leaders constantly, and the biggest beneficiary has been the SP. As many as 15 of its 18 MLAs have deserted the BSP and a large number of them were inducted by the SP, which is also aggressively reaching out to Dalits with a new party wing - Baba Sahab Vahini.

BSP supporters, however, are still sanguine about the party’s chances and claim that the support base is firm but not vocal. The good times for the BSP seem like ancient history. It was in 2007 that the party won the Assembly polls by bagging 206 seats, as it left the SP and the BJP far behind.

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The key to its stupendous victory had been its social engineering. It had got the backing of Muslims, Brahmins along with the entire Dalit vote. It had polled 30.5% vote share, its best-ever. But in the very next election in 2012, the party’s vote share fell to 25.9%.

Signs of trouble cropped up in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, as the BSP couldn’t win a single Lok Sabha seat despite getting around 20% votes of her core Jatav vote bank.

In the 2017 Assembly polls, the party bagged a mere 19 seats but still managed to net nearly 22% vote share. In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Mayawati decided to change course and align with the SP, but the BSP's vote share was less than 20%. So there has been a consistent decline of nearly 10% votes in the last 15 years and bridging this gap seems a tall task for the BSP.

The atrophy has made many believe that the SP could be the number one choice of Muslim voters. Brahmin voters may primarily stick with the BJP and the Congress, while BSP's Dalit vote bank splinters, with Mayawati’s rivals getting a bit of the voter pie.

Despite the setbacks, the BSP has been trying to resurrect itself in other states. In Punjab, after a gap of 25 years, it has entered into an alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal and will fight 20 of the 117 Assembly seats.

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Both parties have indicated that their alliance will continue even for the 2024 general elections. Dalits comprise a huge 31% voting block and Punjab is the home state of Mayawati's mentor and anchor of new Dalit politics, Kanshi Ram.

But political aggression has been found lacking among Dalit voters in Punjab. Moreover, by giving the state its first Dalit chief minister in the form of Charanjit Singh Channi, the Congress seems to have stolen a march on the BSP.

Punjab is the fifth state where the BSP has allied with regional parties, but such alliances haven’t borne any fruit for the party, be it in Chhattisgarh or Karnataka.

As UP polls draw ever closer, Mayawati’s fate hangs in balance. Another loss could deal a crushing blow to the party in the state.

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