IT’S not the first time Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has taken a dig at BSP chief Mayawati, either by way of suggestion that his party was ready for an alliance with her or by way of hinting that she was unwilling to mount a fight against the BJP.
More than a desire to get the BSP on board the INDIA bloc, Gandhi’s message seems to be directed at the Dalits and its ally Samajwadi Party (SP). While the Congress leader seems to be signalling to the Dalits that the BSP is under the thumb of the BJP, hoping that will bring the Congress’s traditional SC vote bank back to it, the subtle message to the SP is that the Congress doors are open to other tie-ups.
On paper, the Congress is the most depleted of all the parties in UP, with the BSP’s still significant vote base failing to add enough heft on its own.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which the SP and BSP contested together, the BSP won 10 seats with a vote share of 19.43%, while the SP got five seats and 18.11% of the votes. The Congress won just one seat and 6.36% of the votes.
The BJP on its own was far ahead of the three, with 62 seats and a vote share of 49.98%.
In the 2022 Assembly polls, when the Congress, BSP and SP contested on their own, the Congress won two Assembly seats with a vote share of 2.33%, and the BSP got just one seat with a vote share of 12.88%. The SP won 111 seats with a vote share of 32.06%. An alliance between the three, on paper, would have put their combined vote share at 47.27%, ahead of the BJP’s 41.29%.
In the seat tally, however, the BJP alone was far ahead at 255.
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In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when the needle in UP swung away from the BJP, largely due to Dalit fears, the SP won the most seats at 37 with 33.84% of the votes. Its ally Congress got six seats and 9.53% of the votes. Together, their vote share of 43.37% was ahead of the BJP’s 33 seats and 41.67% of the votes. The BSP again drew a blank but its vote share was 9.46%.
Mayawati reacted sharply to Gandhi’s expression of disappointment at her not joining the INDIA bloc in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and his claim that the BSP fought elections only in name now. Telling Gandhi to “look within”, Mayawati said it was the Congress that had fought the recent Delhi Assembly polls as the BJP’s ‘B team’.
In the Delhi elections, the INDIA parties had failed to strike an alliance, with its members accusing the Congress of not accommodating the Aam Aadmi Party. As the two contested separately, the BJP registered an easy win. The BSP also fought all the seats in Delhi.
Incidentally, while Gandhi slammed Mayawati for not fighting the BJP alongside the INDIA bloc, it is the SP that has been dead against inducting the BSP into the Opposition alliance. At an INDIA bloc meeting in December 2023, SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav had bluntly told the Congress to decide whether to align with the SP or the BSP in UP, amid indications that some Congress leaders were favourably inclined towards Mayawati.
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In April 2022, soon after the Congress’s disastrous poll performance in UP, Gandhi had made a similar charge against the BSP, claiming his party had reached out to Mayawati for an alliance and even offered her the Chief Minister’s post, but she had not even responded. “She left the field open. Why?” Gandhi said, adding: “The CBI, ED, Pegasus….”
Gandhi added: “You must have seen that Mayawati did not fight the elections. We had sent a message to Mayawati, let’s have an alliance, you be the Chief Minister. She did not even talk. The people like Kanshi Ram ji… I respect him a lot. They gave blood and sweat to awaken the Dalit voice in UP… But today Mayawati is saying that I will not fight for that voice.”
Then too, the attack on the BSP seemed to flow from the belief of a section of the Congress that the party’s failure to win was causing disillusionment among the BSP’s Dalit voter base and that the Congress could offer an alternative.
This also aligns with the Congress’s push for the SC, ST and OBC votes through its social justice pitch, led by Gandhi.
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However, it is easier said than done, at least in UP, given that there is one more claimant for the Dalit vote in young Dalit leader Chadrasekhar Azad, who is now an MP. Azad fought alone in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and stunned everyone by winning from the Nagina Scheduled Caste-reserved constituency of western UP.
