From a resounding result of 206 of 403 UP assembly seats in 2007 polls to a single-seat tally in 2022, and drawing a blank in the 2014 parliamentary polls, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has seen it all in the last 17 years.
Despite repeated drubbings in LS and state polls since 2014, the blue brigade still boasts of being the only party that has a committed voter base.A big chunk of Dalit votes (21 per cent ) the party claims to command keeps Mayawati politically relevant. Even after the drastic fall in BSP’s vote share, it was seen that the majority of Jatavs— forming more than half of the total Dalit population—remained loyal to Mayawati.
Unfazed by the allegations of being BJP’s ‘B’ team, Mayawati, like her mentor Kanshi Ram who formed BSP in 1984, has asked the party cadre to stop NDA and INDIA bloc from getting full majority. According to her, in such a case, a “majboor sarkar” (weak govt) would be formed at the Centre and BSP might get a chance to play a key role in the formation of govt.

This reflects in her candidate selection. While her first list, which had seven Muslim names out of 16, was seen as ‘damaging’ to SP-Congress prospects in west UP, her subsequent lists have shown her strategically shrewd moves to target BJP. In Ghaziabad, where Thakurs are up in arms against BJP for denial of ticket to two-time MP Gen. VK Singh, she has fielded a Thakur, Nand Kishore Pundir. In Meerut, BSP candidate is Devvrat Tyagi. He will make life tough for BJP’s Arun Govil if the influential Tyagi community backs him.
Her “majboor sarkar” argument may sound far-fetched in the current political context, but it does not take away Mayawati’s relevance in UP and beyond. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when SP president Akhilesh Yadav decided to bury the hatchet and join hands with her to defeat BJP in the state, it was because of her political relevance than anything else. In 2019, BSP contested 38 seats and won 10, whereas SP contested 37 seats, winning five. For the party that failed to open its account in 2014 polls, the tie-up with SP brought dividends in 2019.
The Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) combine that is the backbone of SP’s support is much talked about. But the combination Mayawati is trying to forge — Muslim-Dalit (M-D) — is much more formidable in sheer numbers. It happened in some measure in 2019 as a big chunk of Muslim votes, thanks to tie-up with SP, added up to BSP’s Dalit vote base.
Although the SP-BSP alliance fell apart after the 2019 LS polls, this time, too, Mayawati is trying her best to win over minority voters by generously giving tickets to Muslim candidates. “There’s a big opportunity for her in the consolidation of M-D votes. That will solidify her position,” says a political analyst.
No wonder, after experimenting with caste engineering, she is back to her loyal vote bank and has given a large number of tickets to the dedicated cadres. To retain her loyal voters, Mayawati also declared her nephew Akash Anand as her successor in Dec last year. He has been given the responsibility of drawing Dalit youths to the party. To strengthen its poll campaign, the BSP has also taken up its most basic organisational activity, holding cadre camps where Dalit ideology is preached behind closed doors, more vehemently after the 2022 debacle.
Census 2011 pegged UP’s total Dalit population at around 4.1 crore. The state has 66 sub-castes of Dalits with Jatavs constituting the biggest chunk — 2.2 crore or 54 per cent .
The party gave its worstever performance in the 2022 UP assembly elections. Compared to the 2017 assembly elections, when BSP won 19 seats and polled over 22 per cent votes, the single-seat victory in 2022 was BSP’s lowest tally. Considering this, 12.9 per cent of the votes that the party is left with may be the most loyal of its voters through generations.
Being the UP chief minister four times since 1995, Mayawati symbolises Dalit resurgence in the state. Today, she might be facing criticism for her inability to convert her party’s vote share into seats, but it does not take away from her successful political experiments in the past.
Her social engineering fetched BSP its biggest win in 2007, when the party won 206 assembly seats and formed a majority govt. She also became the first UP CM to complete the full five-year term in office. In 2007, BSP polled its highest vote share of 30.4 per cent .
But her tenure was mired with multi-crore National Rural Health Mission scam and subsequent murders. She was also accused of misusing govt funds for construction of Dalit memorials. As a result, BSP’s vote share in 2012 dropped to around 26 per cent with a tally of 80 seats. The party could not improve its performance after the resurgence of BJP in 2014 as several subcastes of Dalits switched over to the saffron party.
According to political experts, while a sizeable section of Dalits is still with BSP, Muslims have drifted away after BSP supported the saffron party on critical issues.
After the 2022 state polls, Mayawati tried to woo Muslims by fielding Shah Alam in Azamgarh parliamentary bypolls in June 2022, and importing Imran Masood from Samajwadi Party in 2022 (though he was expelled a year later for indiscipline and now is an SP candidate from Saharanpur). In urban body polls in May 2023, BSP fielded 11 Muslim candidates out of 17 mayoral seats. The party failed to win even one seat.