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Radhika Ramaseshan
Senior Journalist
PRAGMATISM is the cornerstone of the alliance that the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) sealed to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and possibly the next Assembly polls as a team. SP president Akhilesh Yadav might have couched the pact as a move to bring in a ‘pro-poor’ government at the Centre, conveniently forgetting that Narendra Modi and the BJP notched their success in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and several subsequent Assembly polls with the votes of the underprivileged. BSP chief Mayawati made no bones about her intention, stating that the rapprochement between the SP and the BSP after a 24-year hiatus was meant to give the BJP ‘sleepless nights’. Her claim is a recognition of the truth that if the SP and BSP are decimated again — Mayawati for the third time and Akhilesh for the second serially — their political future would be jeopardised.
This reality was perhaps why Mayawati clung on to the 38 seats she secured after the negotiations with Akhilesh and refused to cede even one to a prospective ally. The BSP needs to win most of these seats and replenish its tally with additions from outside Uttar Pradesh for another reason. Just as Prakash Karat, former CPI(M) general secretary, fanned Mayawati’s aspirations to take a shot at the Prime Minister’s post before the 2009 elections, when she was the UP Chief Minister after scoring a handsome victory, this time the lady herself has enkindled her ambitions. She hopes that the next Lok Sabha battle would throw up a jumbled verdict and open up the space to install a ‘federal front’ government at the Centre, helmed by her. True to her political character, Mayawati sees no contradiction in denying a place to the Congress in the UP coalition and yet inveigling its support for a regional formation if and when the time arrives. To India’s ‘Dalit queen of hearts’, such fine distinctions do not matter, accustomed as she is to speaking tough and straight to those that seek her hand. She made it clear to the Congress Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan that her support to the minority governments they presided over should not be taken for granted.
Akhilesh’s strategy
Akhilesh demonstrated that he was the more tractable of the two. He signalled his willingness to endorse Mayawati as the PM at the joint presser they addressed in Lucknow on January 12, is giving away seats from his quota to smaller caste-based parties and may concede the couple of seats that the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has sought from the 38 he has, provided that the nominees from these entities contest on the SP’s ‘cycle’ symbol. Akhilesh has invested his political capital in UP and not immediately in the Centre because he realised that another setback would make him vulnerable to pressures from within the Yadav clan and give Shivpal Singh Yadav, his ambitious uncle, a handle to assert himself.
Where does the Congress fit in the UP political chessboard? Or for that matter, the RLD that’s being kept in suspense?
Tough turf for Congress
Mayawati plainly stated that she and Akhilesh had nothing to gain by roping in the Congress because it could never transfer its votes to their parties, but benefit itself by drawing in theirs. She recalled that in 1996, when the BSP had tied up with the Congress, and in 2017, when Akhilesh partnered Rahul Gandhi, the vote migration was one way. The Congress could not bring in its votes to them, she said. Worse for the Congress, when it is trying hard to corner the BJP over the Rafale defence deal, Mayawati accused both parties of being equally corrupt.
Negotiating the movement of votes is one problem. However, a bigger issue in UP is that since 1989, the Congress virtually wrote itself off as a has-been but for one significant showing in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections that eventually proved to be a flash in the pan. It failed to grapple with the new dynamics that the twin strands of Ram temple and the empowerment of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) wove into the state’s polity. At long last, Congress president Rahul Gandhi figured out the primacy of the OBCs in heartland politics, when in Chhattisgarh he anointed Bhupesh Baghel, a backward-caste Kurmi, as the Chief Minister.
In UP, the Congress ceded its upper-caste base to the BJP, the Muslims principally to the SP and the Dalits, lock, stock and barrel, to the BSP and the BJP in varying measures. From securing a vote percentage of 31.77, despite getting 15 of the 85 Lok Sabha seats (before Uttarakhand was carved out) in the 1989 polls, the Congress’ vote share plummeted to 7.53 per cent in 2014 when it just about managed to retain Amethi and Rae Bareli.
In the surprise recovery it ostensibly made in 2009, spurred largely by the Manmohan Singh dispensation’s welfare policies and schemes, the Congress won 21 seats and posted a vote share of 18.25 per cent, a 6.21 per cent increase over the 12.04 per cent it got in the 2004 elections. Let alone build, it failed to retain the gains it made in the 2012 Assembly polls, where Rahul’s spirited campaign could not neutralise the impact Akhilesh had as the new white hope.
RLD factor
The RLD was founded in 1996 by Ajit Singh, son of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, and is presently helmed by Jayant Chaudhary, Ajit’s son. It matters only in the Jat belt of western UP. Notwithstanding its unexceptional performance — the highest number of seats it got was five with a vote share of 3.27 per cent in 2009 in conjunction with the BJP — the RLD’s significance lies in its readiness to align with parties, unencumbered by ideology. It has collaborated with the BJP, Congress and SP and supported the BSP’s candidates in the UP Legislative Council elections held in January 2015. Akhilesh certainly believes that the RLD will eventually accept his terms and conditions this time, if only to keep itself afloat in an ambience of uncertainty.
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