Mayawati cuts ties with Gondwana party after MP, Chhattisgarh fiasco, to go solo in LS polls

The BSP leaders justified the party’s move to cut its ties with the GGP, saying their alliance did not work and that the GGP failed to transfer its tribal votes to the BSP candidates in the two states.

The GGP has rejected these claims. It was founded in 1991 to represent the Gond people and champion the demand for a separate Gondwana state.

The BSP had tied up with the GGP in MP and Chhattisgarh to undertake a “new social engineering”, looking to bring about an “alignment of Dalit and tribal voters” ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

The BSP had hoped if its “alliance experiment” with the GGP worked in the two state polls, it would benefit the party in the tribal-inhabited districts of Uttar Pradesh, too, both in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.

“But the BSP made no gain from this alliance in the Assembly polls. The BSP could not win any seat in both the states and the party’s vote share too came down,” said Ramakant Pippal, the MP BSP president. “The GGP could not transfer its votes to BSP candidates. Also, the GGP did not follow the gathbandhan spirit and fielded a candidate in the Jabera seat where the BSP was contesting. But the BSP voters supported the GGP candidates. So the BSP has decided to not continue with the alliance and contest all Lok Sabha seats alone.”

As per the seat-sharing arrangement for the elections to the 230-member MP Assembly, the BSP contested 178 seats while the GGP fielded candidates in 52 constituencies. Not only did the BSP fail to win any seat, but its vote share also fell to 3.4% from 5% in the 2018 polls, when it had won two seats in the state. The GGP did not win any seats either in 2023 or 2018, with its vote share dropping from 1.8% to 0.9%.

In Chhattisgarh, the BSP contested 53 seats and won none with a vote share of 2%, down from 3.9% in 2018, when it had won two seats while contesting without an alliance. The GGP contested 37 constituencies and won one seat, though its vote share dipped to 1.4% from 1.7% in 2018, when it had allied with the Samajwadi Party (SP) but failed to win any seat.

The GGP’s Chhattisgarh working president Kuldeep Prajapati said the parties fell short of their target in the 2023 polls. “Both the GGP and BSP could not achieve the gain that the two parties had expected with the alliance in the Assembly polls. We had hoped to collectively win up to six seats in Chhattisgarh and become part of the government as a balancing power. And, the BSP was then more eager for alliance. But no party initiated talks for an alliance in the Lok Sabha polls. The GGP, in its national executive meet held in Bilaspur on February 11, decided to contest Lok Sabha elections without alliance both in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh,” Prajapati said.

Prajapati also rejected the BSP’s claim that the GGP could not transfer votes to its candidates. “The GGP vote base was transferred to the BSP. The GGP too got a few BSP votes. But it takes two to four years to bring voters of two different communities together on the ground. If the alliance had been announced a few months earlier, we would have got better results,” he said.

The BSP central coordinator and Rajya Sabha MP, Ramji Gautam, said the party will now contest the Lok Sabha polls in Chhattisgarh, MP and Punjab on its own steam.

Dalits and tribals together make up a considerable share of the population in MP and Chattisgarh – while Dalits number at 17% and 15%, respectively, the tribal community accounts for 22% and 32%, respectively. However, in both the states, these groups have largely supported the Congress and the BJP in elections.