LUCKNOW: Amid BJP’s robust outreach to non-Jatav Dalits, the emphatic emergence of Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravan’ on the horizon of Dalit politics in UP, and his claim to Kanshi Ram’s legacy, along with SP’s politics of Pichhda, Dalit, and Alpasankhyak (PDA), the rumblings in the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) seem set to add to the pace of the party’s downslide in the days to come.
The disappointment of the Delhi Assembly election results, where BSP had contested alone with 68 candidates but failed to open its account, suggests the party has lost direction and is caught in an internecine battle of succession, insecurities, and one-upmanship.
The expulsion of Akash Anand, the heir apparent of Mayawati, from the party is an indication of the leadership’s frustration over back-to-back failures at the hustings and the fall of Dalit fortunes.
The fickleness of the party leadership is evident in the action against Akash Anand, who was appointed and sacked as the party face twice in less than a year.
The unfathomable misery of the BSP can be encapsulated in its performances over the past five years, wherein it was reduced to just a single MLA in the UP Assembly in 2022 and had zero presence in the Lok Sabha after the 2024 general elections.
“Significantly, the BSP’s top leadership seems to be in a state of confusion while finding ways to arrest the downslide, and such confusion at the top always results in the erosion of the bottom,” says JP Shukla, a political commentator.
The party, once identified with the political resurgence of the marginalized and synonymous with Dalit assertion, having ruled UP for four terms, is possibly at its nadir at a time when the narrative of social justice and caste census is ringing loud in the political landscape of the country.
The BSP took shape in 1978 as a government employees’ association - BAMCEF (Backward and Minority Committees Employees’ Federation) - conceptualized by Kanshi Ram.
Gradually transitioning into a political entity, it emerged from its predecessor, the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Samiti (DS-4), set up in 1984.
The big political upheaval created by the BSP during the mid-80s and its rise to prominence in the difficult political terrain of UP by the mid-90s led to the party’s eventual attainment of political power under the leadership of Mayawati, who became the first Dalit woman chief minister of UP in June 1995. She served as UP CM for a record four times.
BSP’s decline commenced after BJP’s unprecedented performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, followed by the mammoth majority it received in the 2017 Assembly elections.
Prior to this, Mayawati’s social engineering, which included upper castes, took the party to its zenith in the 2007 Assembly elections when it won 206 seats with a 30.46 percent vote share in Uttar Pradesh.
The party’s fall to 12.9 percent in the 2022 UP Assembly election and 9.39 percent in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections calls for thorough introspection.
However, that political wave, on which the BSP had touched its pinnacle, seems to have ebbed. Over a decade later, the party appears to have lost the ‘master key’ to political power and is now grappling with an existential crisis.
The BSP faces a critical challenge, as its core support base alone may not suffice to clinch power unless the party embraces other caste alliances, for which Mayawati appears reluctant. However, Mayawati’s success in 2007 was attributed to her capability to consolidate various sub-castes.
“In fact, Mayawati had then realized that her core Dalit vote was numerically not enough to get her a majority in UP. Consequently, she moved beyond her core constituency, the ‘Bahujan,’ to ‘Sarvajan,’ stitching a rainbow alliance of all castes and projecting Satish Chandra Mishra as the party’s Brahmin face in 2007.
The strategy paid off, and Mayawati secured a majority with 206 seats in the 403-member Assembly. Consequently, she became the first UP CM to serve a full five-year term (2007-12),” says JP Shukla.
However, she was ousted by the Samajwadi Party in the 2012 Assembly elections, and since then, the decline has been unstoppable.
The BSP drew a blank in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, its tally came down to 19 from 80 seats in the 2017 Assembly elections. The party won 10 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, fought in a grand alliance with the SP and RLD. However, the BSP, which benefited the most from the alliance, walked out of it before the 2022 Assembly polls.
As a result, in the 2022 Assembly polls, the party could manage only one seat (Rasra) in Ballia district, securing just 12.8% of the votes, its lowest since 1989, when it got 9.46% of the votes.
However, Mayawati’s failure to expand the party’s base beyond its core constituency, to modify itself according to the need of the times, and Mayawati’s controversial leadership style, have all contributed to the BSP’s decline.
Political experts believe that signs of “Behenji” bogged down in issues like succession, and suspicion of successors, instead of focusing on making a genuine attempt at the revival of the lost base, suggest a distracted leader not keen on rebuilding.
“At present, Mayawati has completely strayed from the ideals of her mentor Kanshi Ram. Lacking the flexibility warranted from a leader of her stature, Mayawati has reduced the party to be her family’s private limited firm,” says Prof AK Mishra, a political scientist.
He adds that Mayawati has failed to nurture a second tier of leadership within the party. Her autocratic approach, aloofness, and failure to adapt inclusivity have been the key factors in the exodus of many stalwarts from the party, adding to its decline.