LUCKNOW: After the Lok Sabha elections this year, in which Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fielded Muslim candidates in 20 of the 80 parliamentary seats in UP, which was also the maximum representation that her party gave to any community in ticket distribution, the party may now be slowly distancing itself from Muslims to centre its politics around Dalits and backwards.
The recent post by BSP national president Mayawati on her social media account slamming the opposition, mainly the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, for raking up the Sambhal violence in Parliament again and again but assuming silence on atrocities against Dalits in Bangladesh, evidences her last-ditch effort to keep Dalits and backwards consolidated under her party's banner.
Mayawati, who has been extremely critical of the BJP govt at the centre and in the state for things like the survey of private madrassas, Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2024, PFI ban, or keeping senior SP leader Azam Khan in jail, had her reaction to Sambhal violence limited to a few lines condemning the incident and holding the govt and administration responsible for it. Contrarily, it is the reservation for SCs and STs that she has taken up vehemently on more than one occasion.
Muslims may have shunned BSP already in UP while its Dalit vote base is also fast eroding. "In that case, keeping the party's Dalit vote base intact is the priority," said sources in the party.
The recent bypolls on eight assembly seats in UP had the party's two Muslim candidates cornering the least number of votes. BSP fielded Muslims in Meerapur and Kundarki, where Samajwadi Party, Azad Samaj Party, and AIMIM also had their Muslim candidates in the fray.
The BSP candidates were relegated to the fifth slot in both places. The Meerapur candidate got 3,248 votes (1.8%) and the Kundarki candidate got a mere 1,099 votes (0.5%), thus losing with a massive margin of over 1.7 lakh votes.
The coming together of Congress and Samajwadi Party in UP has further taken away the Dalit vote, including Jatavs, from BSP. The non-Jatav Dalit vote base is what the party started losing since 2014 with BJP gaining ground in the state.