The Bahujan Samaj Party’s decision to go alone in all forthcoming elections is a tricky one given that the party has performed poorly in all polls it has fought on its own.
In the last 12 years, the party has fought five elections without a partner. The first of these was in 2012, when the party lost power and won only 80 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha election. Two years later, it went alone into the Lok Sabha polls but drew a blank. This was a sharp drop from 2009, when it had 20 MPs.
In 2017, the BSP once again fought the state’s assembly elections alone. The result - wins for just 17 candidates. In 2019, the party teamed up with the Samajwadi Party and won 10 seats. However, as soon as the results were announced, Mayawati declared that while her core support had shifted to the Samajwadi Party, a reverse shift had not happened, and thus, she would not ally with the party.
In 2022 the BSP fought the Vidhan Sabha poll on its own and registered just a single win. Thus, the party’s track record of going solo has been abysmal.
So why is the party averse to any alliances? The BSP is facing an identity crisis. The young Dalit voter has not seen the party’s massive outreach and its systematic schedule of programmes that built Dalit pride. Even Mayawati’s birthdays and Kanshiram’s birth anniversaries have been tame affairs for the past many years.
This cuts both ways as it also distresses the party cadre who feel directionless in the absence of a concrete schedule of programmes. A dispirited cadre in turn is unable to enthuse voters on a sustained basis.
In UP, the performance of the Samajwadi Party which has cast itself as the guardian of the Constitution also takes away a space that the BSP has previously occupied.
What then could be the BSP’s end game?
In a series of tweets, two days ago, Mayawati wrote that it was to protect the morale of the cadre that the party would not get into alliances in which it did not benefit from vote transfer. However, in the absence of any clearly spelt out alternative, the BSP, it seems, will continue to flounder.