Is the party now over for Mayawati and BSP in UP?

Lucknow, Dec 4 (IANS) The Bahujan Samaj Party has miserably failed to arrest its downslide in politics.

The BSP failed to open its account in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana and bagged just two seats in Rajasthan, negating party President chief Mayawati’s claim of emerging as a ‘kingmaker.’

The BSP’s poor performance in the state Assembly elections will have a direct impact on its fortunes in Uttar Pradesh where its graph has been rapidly sliding down since 2012.

Moreover, the BSP now stands completely isolated and its stocks have further gone down after the results in four states.

For Mayawati to join hands with the Congress could prove to be an uphill task since the Samajwadi Party will not accept the same and this could disturb the fragile alliance within the INDIA bloc.

As a senior party functionary put it, “The game is over for us - at least for the time being. We have burnt too many bridges and lost our bargaining power. We are being seen as a stooge of the BJP. If we want to resurrect the BSP, the leadership will have to take a reality check, connect with grassroots workers, instill confidence in them and return to the ideology on which the BSP stands. All this seems a Herculean task and cannot be accomplished before the Lok Sabha polls.

The BSP has fared worse than it had done in 2018 in four states where polls were held.

The party polled 2.09 per cent of the votes in Chhattisgarh, 1.82 per cent in Rajasthan, 3.32 per cent in Madhya Pradesh and 1.38 per cent in Telangana.

Sadulpur and Bari in Rajasthan were the only seats that the BSP won this time.

The BSP had polled 4.03 per cent votes and bagged six Assembly seats in Rajasthan in 2018.

The party had secured 5.01 per cent votes and won two seats in Madhya Pradesh five years ago. In Chhattisgarh, it had polled 3.87 per cent votes and bagged two seats in 2018.

In Telangana, the BSP had fielded candidates on 106 Assembly seats but failed to open its account in 2018 whereas in the 2014 Assembly election, it had bagged two seats even as the BRS (then TRS) wave swept the state.

The BSP, which had announced to go solo this year, later formed an alliance with Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh after declaration of the poll schedule by the Election Commission.

Mayawati had steadfastly maintained equidistance from the two national political blocs and insisted that it would neither join the Congress-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

“The BSP will emerge as the third front in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana,” the party’s national coordinator and Mayawati’s nephew Akash Anand, who led the campaign, had stated.

Mayawati had planned the Assembly election campaign in the four states as the launch pad for Akash in national politics as well as to send a message to the party cadre that he will be her political successor.

Ahead of the election, Mayawati had pompously announced that her party would take a call on joining the government after the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana to emerge as a “balance of power”.