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If anybody, it’s the Behenji of Uttar Pradesh (UP) who is making the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its master strategist Amit Shah more nervous than either the Yadavs or the Gandhis in the key north Indian swing state.
Over the past month, Mayawati has conducted a sustained anti-BJP and anti-Samajwadi Party (SP) campaign, largely unnoticed by the media, across UP. She has also quietly tried to reinvent herself.
Mayawati is no longer just “behenji”. Her party’s second-rung leaders, its press statements as also her supporters have increasingly taken to calling her “mahanayika” or the great leader of social change and the “iron lady” of UP. That in a nutshell is also Mayawati’s twin message to the electorate in her current election campaign.
Her pitch for BSP’s core issue of social justice is directed at the Dalits as also those among most backward castes ignored by SP. The “iron lady” moniker is to remind the electorate, particularly Muslims and Dalits, how her tenure was free of communal violence and atrocities on lower castes, unlike the SP rule marred by communal riots in Muzaffarnagar and increased crimes against Dalits.
According to information gathered by this writer from BSP activists across the state, Mayawati has devoted 90 per cent of her time to UP since she hit the road on March 22. She is addressing two rallies a day and has covered the length and breadth of the state, at least twice.
At all her recent public rallies, Mayawati, as she did at her rallies on Thursday in Sultanpur and Pratapgarh, attacked BJP and SP for playing a “fixed match”.
“The two parties are in the conspiracy together to polarise votes on religious lines in Purvanchal,” she said. The BSP chief cautioned people to be alert to BJP’s effort to cause communal tensions in eastern UP by “provocative statements” by their leaders.
Mayawati, in her typical monotone, told electorate how the bhayavaha (scary) face of BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was back. “BJP’s is a well thought out strategy to heighten communal tensions,” she said. The BSP leader called Modi’s claim that he would rid Parliament of criminals “laughable”, pointing out how several members of BJP’s top leadership were accused in criminal cases relating to the Babri Mosque demolition of 1992 and Godhra riots of 2002.
Mayawati no longer attacks ‘Manuwadi’ forces at her public rallies, but has taken to accusing “big capitalists and industrial houses” for “manufacturing” a media wave in Modi’s favour. Mayawati alleged opinion polls to also have been sponsored in BJP’s favour .
Mayawati’s well-attended rallies have been backed by effective ticket distribution. BSP gave 19 tickets to Muslims and 21 to Brahmins. She kept tickets to Jatavs, her own caste, to a minimum, to counter criticism that during her chief ministerial tenure she was partial in favour of her own community.
On the ground, say party sources, BSP has tried to revive its Jatav, Muslim and Brahmin support base that helped it form the government in Lucknow in 2007.
At 27.42 per cent, BSP had the highest vote share among all the four major players in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The party lost power in 2012 but its vote share remained a respectable 26 per cent — four per cent below that of SP’s.
BSP and SP have together accounted for 50-60 per cent of vote share and half the state’s seats in all elections, both Lok Sabha and Assembly, since 2004. BJP’s high points in UP were in the 1990s. Its last good performance was in 2002 Assembly elections, when it was the runner-up with 25.31 per cent votes.
BJP’s own assessment, including that of Shah’s, is that Muslims voted for BSP in western UP, as they sensed BSP’s Jatav vote continued to remain with Mayawati, unlike SP’s Yadav vote that had shown signs of shifting towards BJP. The elections now enter the areas that BSP and SP think are their strongholds in central and eastern UP. These areas will vote on April 30, May 7 and May 12.
BSP leaders say Mayawati’s attack on BJP is going to get sharper. But BJP has until now been tentative in attacking the Dalit leader. Both Shah and Modi have struggled to effectively shape their attack on Mayawati and BSP, aware that Dalits could get offended by any personal attack on their leader. Shah, hoping that non-Jatavas among Dalits vote for BJP, has focused his speeches on Mayawati favouring Jatavs at the expense of all other Dalit communities. Modi has kept criticism of Mayawati focused on her failure to develop the state.
Can Mayawati, whose BSP never issues a manifesto, puncture BJP’s chances of leading the seats tally in UP? There are enough people in UP who think she is the hurdle that BJP might find difficult to overcome in its bid to cross Shah’s target of more than 50 of UP’s 80 seats.
