The Bahujan Samaj Party boss Mayawati has declared that her party would be contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections without opting for any pre-poll alliance. However, she has made it abundantly clear that she would be open to post-poll alignments. Effectively, Mayawati who has refrained from actively participating in the recent Assembly polls, is engaged in a balancing act aimed at both saving her party as well as keeping it relevant at the national level. Mayawati’s assessment is pragmatic since any kind of pre-poll arrangement could make her vulnerable in the wake of multiple allegations of financial irregularities being made against her and her party.
She may be apprehending that various central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI could get after her. Simultaneously, she is aware that it would be extremely difficult to win many seats on her own steam given that her vote share has been dwindling and today is at its lowest. She has an existential crisis and is at this juncture exploring her options. Many political analysts are of the opinion that Mayawati would join the INDIA bloc soon after the declaration of the polls, since she would be able to make some impact only if she has an alliance with the Congress and the Samajwadi party, considered by many as her arch enemy. The Samajwadi Party too is facing the toughest battle of its electoral history and knows that on its own, it would have the same kind of fate as it did in the 2019 polls.
It needs Mayawati as much as the BSP needs Akhilesh Yadav though both of them adopt postures that could be deceptive. The Congress which has hardly any base left in Uttar Pradesh, is hopeful that the Minorities could shift towards it since the Muslims in particular have realized that the BJP can only be stopped by a national party and not regional players.
Both Mayawati and Sonia Gandhi apparently enjoy certain cordiality and the political grapevine is that the BSP had agreed to back the Congress in Rae Bareilly. It is a different question that Sonia Gandhi may not contest the Lok Sabha polls and many in her party are pressuring her to enter Parliament in April through Rajya Sabha before the 2024 polls.
Whether she agrees to this is something which is in the realm of speculation but if she does, it would be significant to see who would contest the Rae Bareilly seat in her place. If the Gandhi siblings, decide to leave UP and look for greener and safer pastures in the South, it would send wrong signals regarding the intentions of the Congress and could lead to its further decimation in the country’s largest and most populous state.
Coming back to Mayawati, she also has to figure out her alliances in other States as well.
For instance, in Punjab, if she aligns with the Shiromani Akali Dal, which is not a part of any national pre-poll arrangement, it would rub the Congress the wrong way. She has a solid vote bank, which she is capable of transferring in case she gets into the serious business of contesting and defeating the BJP. Many observers who have been watching the developments of the BSP feel that she is playing a dual game. She has publicly declared her nephew as her political heir but while he is engaged in his political activity, she is calling the shots from behind the scenes. Those who have written her off do not realise that she can still make the difference between winning and losing in some of the seats in several Northern States, particularly UP, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh. Mayawati has come a long way since she contested her maiden election from Bijnore in December, 1985 and lost to Meira Kumar who too was fighting her first election under the watchful eyes of her father, the late Jagjiwan Ram. Incidentally, Ram Bilas Paswan was also in the field in the same election, the only time, the trio faced each other directly. Prior to that in 1983, Mayawati who stayed somewhere in Inderpuri in Delhi, campaigned for the BJP nominee Prof. Ram Nath Vij in the Metropolitan Council elections from Rajinder Nagar.
She did her political apprenticeship under the late Kanshi Ram, who in fact in the early nineties, had got into a pact with the then Congress president and Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao for seat sharing in Uttar Pradesh which finally led to the diminishing of the Congress in the State. Whether this was strategic or deliberate is something that continues to be a point of discussion in political circles. Rao had wanted the Congress to be weakened in the Northern States, so that he could remain the PM with the massive support he would get from the Southern region. In the meantime, the BJP has consolidated its position in UP and after Gujarat, if the Saffron Brigade is extremely strong, it is in this region.
Under Yogi Adityanath, the BJP outperformed itself in the past election and therefore it would be a major task to overcome the challenge posed by him. Many analysts may like to write off Mayawati but this can never be true as long as she enters the electoral arena with the single purpose intent of beating the BJP. The BJP which is in a superior position would not like to get into any pre-poll alliance with her, which would be the compelling reason for her to join the INDIA bloc after the announcement of the Parliamentary polls.