In the shadows,it was all Maya

Among the seats the BSP has won are Bharathna — vacated by Mulayam Singh Yadav — and Padrauna and Jhansi,which were vacated by Union ministers R P N Singh and Pradeep Aditya Jain respectively after their election to the Lok Sabha this year.

For the win,the BSP leaders give credit to Mayawati who stayed away from the campaign but did whatever she could to ensure a low-key,but intense campaign at the grassroots level. She personally monitored the entire campaign on a day-to-day basis and assigned tasks to workers as and when necessary. “She had made it clear she would not go to any constituency to avoid polarisation of anti-BSP votes for a single candidate,as had happened in the past,” said a party worker.

According to sources,Mayawati had asked her party coordinators to select at least 30 workers from districts that are adjacent to the Assembly constituencies where bypolls were held. “She deployed workers from different districts in every sector of these Assembly constituencies and directed them to give emphasis on the door-to-door campaign. This strategy has yielded results,” said a BSP leader.

He added that Mayawati had fixed everyone’s responsibility. “Be it the ministers,MLAs or party workers,she had given them clear tasks,” the source said. Mayawati tasked her close aide and party’s Muslim face Nasimuddin Siddiqui to visit every constituency regularly and give her feedback.

Party leaders,including MLAs and MPs,were asked to harp on personal contact with voters. “Her strict instructions were that there must not be open,aggressive campaign as it would damage the party’s prospects,” said a source.

What is significant in the results is that Mayawati’s political game plan to counter the Mulayam-Kalyan combine to consolidate the OBC votebank has clicked. The victory of BSP candidates Mahendra Singh Rajpoot and Shiv Prasad Yadav in Etawah and Bharthna is a case in point. The SP regarded these seats as its pocket-boroughs.

Mulayam himself was elected from Bharthna in 2007 — he vacated the seat after his election to the Lok Sabha in May.

Mayawati had made a dent in Kalyan Singh’s Lodh community when she sent Lodh leader Ganga Charan Rajpoot to the Rajya Sabha. Similarly,she had sent Vinay Shakya,who lost to Mulayam in the Manpiuri Lok Sabha constituency,to the Legislative Council. “The decisions to send Rajpoot to the Rajya Sabha and Shakya to the Legislative Council were taken after the BSP’s defeat in the Lok Sabha. This helped the party get OBC votes,” said a source.

Apart from retaining its Lalitpur seat in Bundelkhand region,BSP candidate Swami Prasad Maurya snatched Padrauna seat from the Congress in Kushinagar district. The by-election to the Padarauna seat was necessitated by the resignation of Union Minister R P N Singh,who is now MP from Kushinagar.

The Padrauna seat was important for the BSP as Maurya happens to be the state president of the party. BSP candidate Kailash Sahu won from Jhansi by a small margin — vacated by another Union minister,Pradeep Aditya Jain.

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