In the Haryana assembly election, the Bahujan Samaj Party sees a chance to hold on to its status as a national party because of the big number of Dalit voters in the state.
This is in line with the party’s decision to also fight the byelections on 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh. At its peak, the BSP kept its focus on assembly and Lok Sabha polls and did not participate in the in-between or lower-level elections.
A national party is one which has 11 Lok Sabha seats from at least three states or had six percent of the vote in any four or more states in addition to four Lok Sabha seats or is recognised as a state party in four states.
The BSP in alliance with the Indian National Lok Dal and the Haryana Lokhit Party will fight 37 seats in the Haryana elections. This includes all the reserved seats. In the last Vidhan Sabha election, BSP went at it alone and put up candidates on 87 of the state’s 90 seats. On 82 seats the party forfeited even its deposit. The party’s vote share was 4.14 per cent. In the 2014 election it had also fought on 87 seats and won from a single constituency. Its vote percentage was 4.37 per cent.
This time the party is banking on the alliance to get it votes of the Dalits and the marginalised. Almost one fifth of the state’s voters are from these categories.
Mayawati herself will address four large rallies in the state with the first being on September 27. The party’s main focus, however, is on small meetings and direct contact which will be undertaken by Mayawati’s brother Anand Kumar and nephew Akash Anand.
The BSP has largely been unable to capitalise on the Dalit vote in the state mainly because of the pary's own mistakes. In 2004, 2009 and 2014 the BSP contested the most number of seats, that is 10 in the Lok Sabha elections in Haryana. The percentage of votes it mopped up went from under two percent to over 15 per cent. However, the only time it had a MP from Haryana was in 1998, when the party contested on three seats and polled 7.68 per cent of the votes.
The assembly elections however is a chance for the party to demonstrate its seriousness to the state's voters besides emerging as a credible challenger to other parties.