New Delhi: The decision of Mayawati to go solo in the upcoming assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan is a political gamble by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief as both the Congress and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are vying for the votes of scheduled castes (SCs) in the two states.
While the BJP leadership is making attempts to reach out to members of the BSP and former members of the party to join the ruling party before the polls, a section of the Congress leadership believes that upper castes are annoyed with the SC population after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) decided to restore changes suggested by the Supreme Court in the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
“The BSP has a fair share of vote base in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the state leadership of the BSP is unhappy with the recent decisions of Mayawati, so we are in touch with present members of the BSP and also with former members in both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. BSP leaders in MP and Rajasthan realise that they may not be able to win many seats in the absence of an alliance and the political future of these members is in doubt,” said a senior BJP leader from Madhya Pradesh.
The BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to change the vote base and social base of the party and reach out to different sections of the people. The political dilemma for Mayawati is to protect its vote base from both the BJP and Congress. The NDA brought a new legislation to overturn a Supreme Court order concerning certain provisions about arrests under the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) law.
In March this year, the apex court had said people accused of committing an offence under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, or SC/ST Act, would be arrested only after the approval of a senior superintendent of police and a preliminary inquiry would be conducted to find out if there was a prima facie case against the accused.
Mayawati on Wednesday announced that her party would contest Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan alone while the BSP is in alliance with Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress in Chhattisgarh. “The Congress leadership in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan was divided on the issue of an alliance with the BSP. Rajasthan leaders did not want an alliance with any other political party, the MP leadership was holding talks with Mayawati,” said a senior leader of the Congress based in Bhopal.
Senior leaders of the Congress argue that the decision of the Union government has irked a section of upper caste voters in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and they are in a mood to punish any political party that wants to side with the Scheduled Caste community. Congress leaders also said that the party was in a better position in Rajasthan as they had managed to win 20 of the 22 by-elections in the state since the 2013 assembly polls.
“We believe that there is momentum in favour of the Congress in Rajasthan. We did not want to join hands with any political party because there was no need. The Congress is strong enough in Rajasthan to win on its own,” said a senior Congress leader based in Jaipur.
After the debacle of the BSP in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections, when the party only managed to get 19 seats out of 403, Mayawati is trying to revive the political influence of the BSP before the 2019 general elections. While trying to regain political relevance in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati is also seeking to expand her social and electoral footprint in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The BSP had only managed to win 4 seats with a 6.2% vote share in Madhya Pradesh in 2013 and 3 seats with a vote share of 3.3% in Rajasthan in the 2013 state polls.