Null and void: The fall and fall of Mayawati’s BSP

In Uttar Pradesh, where it had won 10 seats in the last Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the party was trailing at third or fourth position on most of the seats.

At 5 pm, the BSP’s vote share nationally stood at roughly 2 per cent, almost half of its 2019 share.

In UP, the BSP’s vote share dropped to 9.32 per cent – a drop of over 3 percentage points as compared to its 2022 Assembly elections vote share of 12.88 per cent. The party had won only one Assembly seat.

In this Lok Sabha election, BSP chief Mayawati addressed over 40 rallies across the country, including 30 in UP. But in the middle of the seven-phase election, Mayawati removed her nephew, Akash Anand, from the position of party national coordinator and her successor, days after he was booked for “promoting enmity” in his speech in Sitapur. Following which, Akash, who had been attacking the BJP in his rallies, curtailed his plans of canvassing after that FIR.

Bid to garner Muslim votes fails

In this Lok Sabha election, the BSP had fielded maximum number of Muslim candidates in UP — 35 — in a bid to broaden her support bas with a combination of Dalits and Muslim votes. Muslims constitute about 20 per cent of the population in UP.
This, however, led the Opposition alliance of the SP and Congress to accuse the BSP of being the “B-team” of the ruling BJP as they apprehended that by fielding Muslim candidates, Mayawati would make a dent in the INDIA bloc’s vote share, thereby benefitting the BJP.

But the trends so far suggest that the party failed to get Muslim votes, and a section of Dalit votes has also drifted away from the BSP.

Emergence of Azad, the Dalit youth icon

Amid the decline of BSP in UP, this Lok Sabha election saw the emergence of a young Dalit leader in Chandrashkhar Azad, who is leading from Nagina Scheduled Caste reserved constituency by over 1.50 lakh votes.

Azad, who did not join the alliance of the SP and Congress, contested under his party banner — Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram), garnered over 5 lakh votes as the counting was in progress. He was leading against BJP’s Om Kumar and SP’s Manoj Kumar. With Manoj Kumar polling over 1 lakh votes, it suggested that Muslims too voted for Azad instead of backing the SP candidate in Nagina.