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A month after resigning from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), its founder-member and former minister, Deena Nath Bhaskar, on Monday said he had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a formal announcement will be made in Bhadohi, UP, on May 14.
"I resigned from BSP on April 4 and, after detailed deliberation with my supporters, I have become a member of the BJP," Bhaskar told reporters in Bhadohi.
"A formal announcement to this effect will be made in a public meeting at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Park here in the presence of state BJP President LK Bajpai and other senior leaders," Bhaskar said.
When asked about elections, he said if the party gave him a ticket, he would contest the 2017 Assembly polls from the Auraiya constituency.
Bhaskar was health minister in SP-BSP coalition-led Uttar Pradesh government in 1993 and had later quit the BSP to join the Samajwadi Party in 1996. He returned to his parent party in 2009.
Bhaskar's defection is important and not just because he is one of the original members of the BSP. The BSP's electoral performance has been dipping and apart from the fact that it got zero seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, its status as a national party itself is under threat.
Despite contesting all 70 seats for the Delhi Assembly elections, the party was unable to notch up even a single victory. Its performance should have disturbed its leaders: in the Adarshnagar Assembly constituency, BSP's Ramnivas could get just 681 votes, in Ambedkar Nagar, its candidate Rajbeer got 815 votes and in Babarpur, Abdul Haq got 754 votes. The highest number of votes its candidate notched up was 30,080 (Surendra Kumar from Gokulpur).
This was immediately after its disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha elections that prompted the Election Commission of India to ask the BSP why it should qualify to call itself a national political party. To qualify to get the national party tag, a party has to get at least 6 per cent of the votes cast in four states; or at least 2 per cent of the votes cast in three quarters of the Lok Sabha seat.
The BSP argued in its defence that the Election Commission should keep its enquiries on hold until the Delhi election had been completed. That was in February 2015. It is now May and the BSP is looking for another reprieve. The important thing is that if a party loses its national status, it cannot use a uniform symbol to contest elections all over the country - it has to use a different symbol in different states.
The party was formed by Kanshi Ram in 1984 but after he fell ill in the early 1990s, Mayawati took over the organisation. She had able lieutenants - including Bhaskar - but interestingly, most of those who had helped Kanshi Ram create the party are now in the BJP.
This includes Jugal Kishore, party MP in the Rajya Sabha whose term is till 2016, but who has attacked Mayawati in no uncertain terms, charging her with selling seats - that is, charging money to allow candidates to contest using the BSP symbol, the elephant. Kishore is said to be negotiating with the BJP.
Similarly, Akhilesh Das, former Rajya Sabha MP, also alleged Mayawati demanded money if he wanted to repeat his term in the Upper House. The charge was rejected by Mayawati. Das has since been keeping a low profile though hoardings have cropped up in Lucknow in his support.
Infighting has broken out in the party, even though Mayawati continues to enjoy some traction among Dalits. However, her recent attacks on the BJP and the decision to not support the land acquisition Bill might be a reaction to poaching on her party by the BJP. The party has 10 seats in the Rajya Sabha, so it is a sizeable presence.
But there's no denying the fact that the BJP is making inroads fast into Dalit regions. It won 66 out of 131 reserved seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, four states went to the polls - Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. Out of a total 71 reserved seats, the BJP won 67.
That was arguably in another time. But since then the BSP has not been gaining support, only losing it. Bhaskar's defection is not good news for Mayawati.
