New Delhi: The Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) diminishing trajectory continued in the latest round of assembly elections as it drew a blank in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana. However, it cut into the votes of both the Congress and the BJP in these states as well as Rajasthan.
The Mayawati-led party fared marginally better in Rajasthan where it managed to win just two seats.
Five years back, the BSP had won 6 seats from Rajasthan and 2 each from MP and Chhattisgarh. Not just the seats, its vote share also dwindled in these elections.
In MP and Chhattisgarh, it was in an alliance with a regional player, Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP), which managed to bag one seat in the second state.
What it managed to do was emerge as a vote-cutter, hurting the two national parties — the BJP and the Congress — on at least 66 seats in the four states. All these seats saw the two national parties take the top two spots. The victory margins in these 66 seats were less than the votes secured by the BSP/GGP candidates.
Further, the BSP emerged runners-up in additional four seats — 3 in Madhya Pradesh and 1 in Rajasthan — pushing the Congress to the third spot. All these four seats went to the BJP.
In Madhya Pradesh, on 24 seats that Congress won, the BSP and the GGP secured more votes than the victory margin, thereby hurting the BJP candidates. Similarly, the alliance played spoiler for the Congress on 22 seats, handing an advantage to the BJP.
That said, the ruling party emphatically posted a two-thirds majority in the Madhya Pradesh assembly by winning 163 of the total 230 seats.
As for Chhattisgarh, the two allies hurt the national parties on six seats — four (Congress) and two (BJP). In Rajasthan, the BSP hurt the Congress in seven seats and the BJP in five.
The scenario was a bit different in Telangana, as the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), not the BJP, and the Congress were main contenders. The BSP caused equal damage — 3 seats each — to the two parties in the southern state.
Overall, the BSP cut into the BJP votes on 31 seats and the Congress on 39 seats in the four states, apart from Mizoram, that went to polls from 7 November to 30 November.
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GGP experiment fails in MP & Chhattisgarh
According to the seat-sharing arrangement reached in early October, the BSP contested 178 seats and the GGP 52 seats in Madhya Pradesh. For the Chhattisgarh polls, the BSP fielded 53 candidates and the GGP 37.
The alliance cut the votes of either of the national parties in six seats in Chhattisgarh.
With its Scheduled Caste population pegged at 15.60 percent, Madhya Pradesh has 34 SC-reserved seats. SCs, as well as STs and OBCs, form the crux of Mayawati’s support base.
Not only did the alliance draw a blank in Madhya Pradesh, the BSP vote share also fell from 5.01 per cent in 2018 to 3.40 per cent in 2023.
On the other hand, Chhattisgarh, which has a 13 per cent SC population, has 10 reserved seats. The BSP vote share, too, went down from 3.87 percent to 2.05 percent, with the party failing to open its account.
The GGP won from Pali-Tanakhar constituency, but its candidate Tuleshwar Hira Singh won by only 700 votes.
Meagre returns in Rajasthan
Rajasthan has about 18 per cent SC population, and 34 seats are reserved for this segment of the population.
Though the BSP had won six seats in 2018, all its 6 MLAs had joined the Congress in September 2019 ahead of the municipal elections.
From six seats, its tally came down to two this year. Manoj Kumar won Sadulpur by 2,500 votes against Congress’s Krishna Poonia. In Bari, Jaswant Singh Gurjar trounced his BJP rival Giriraj Singh by 27,400 votes.
Additionally, it cut into the votes of the BJP and the Congress in 7 seats and 12 seats, respectively.
No impact in Telangana
The BSP announced its Telangana unit chief and former IPS officer and R.S. Praveen Kumar as its chief minister of the state where SCs comprise 16.6 percent of the population.
But, this move resulted in no gains: the BSP vote share came down from 2 per cent in 2018 to 1.37 per cent. Worse, Kumar came third in Sirpur.
Nineteen constituencies are reserved for the Scheduled Castes in the southern state. On six seats, the BSP’s vote share was more than the victory margin of winning candidates. The BRS won three of these seats, the Congress two and the BJP one.
Mayawati had stayed away from both the National Democratic Alliance and the INDIA bloc, with the plan to go solo in these elections. Later, the party announced its tie-up with GGP in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh after the polling dates were announced for the states.
In July, Mayawati had hinted at her plan to emerge as a “kingmaker” in the four states. “To emerge as a balance of power in these states, the BSP can join the government. It can work for the welfare of the dalits, backwards and check their oppression, exploitation and injustice,” she had said.
“The weaker sections and religious minorities residing in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana can get benefit of their Constitutional rights only when an alliance government compelled to work for the welfare of the people and not a government that is strong and egoistic comes to power.”
The BSP supremo held eight rallies each in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and two rallies each in Chhattisgarh and Telangana in the run up to the elections. But when the results came out on 2 December, there was no change in the diminishing fortunes of the BSP and its supremo.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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