Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati’s recent statement that she will go it alone if she doesn’t get a ‘respectable number of seats’ may sound disturbing to those wishing for an opposition front against the BJP in the 2019 parliamentary elections. She would be a key pillar of any nation-wide coalition and had agreed to put up a joint candidate along with the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal in the Kairana by-election, where the BJP lost by a huge margin. It had raised hopes that Mayawati, along with other political heavyweights such as Mamata Bannerjee and Sharad Pawar, would