Dalit Czarina Mayawati
Mayawati’s misfortunes in the Indian polity started from her downfall in the elections of 2012 when she lost the race to power in the UP elections. She not just bit the dust in the 2014 general elections failing to open an account in UP but even the elections of 2017 in the state of UP saw her not doing well.
But the recently concluded civic polls have once again raised hopes of her being the elephant in the room with it challenging the existence of BJP as a frontline player.
While Mayawati has once again repeated her clichéd EVM comment where she talks of them being faulty like others in the opposition, her party the Bahujan Samaj Party after two consecutive and crippling defeats in parliamentary and assembly polls sees new ground.
Behind the BJP’s massive win was a team of the largest and strongest army of foot soldiers in form of BJP and RSS cadres, over 300 sitting MLAs deployed to reach out to voters. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath criss-crossed UP to campaign for civic elections. It was also a first when a ruling party came out with a full-fledged manifesto for a local body election, and the chief minister himself campaigned on a war footing.
Mayawati still holds the record of being a four-time chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
She was the first chief minister in decades to complete a five-year term without the crutches of an alliance government.
In the 2017 Assembly elections BSP had just 19 seats in its account.
Mayawati interestingly has the dubious distinction of stitching a combine of Dalits + Muslims + OBC voters.
While there were earlier reports of her loyal footsoldiers shifting allegiance, the party’s traditional Dalit vote bank along with Muslims seem to be returning to the BSP.
Mayawati for the first time, formed city-level committees to organise poll campaigns and reach out to its voters.
The highlight of the BSP’s performance was, however, unseating the BJP from Aligarh. BJP had never lost a mayoral election in Aligarh since 1995 after the system of direct voting was introduced but the BSP changed that this civic election.
Had a three way split not happened in non-BJP vote, BSP could have managed to win a couple of seats more says a report.
Coming out as the main challenger to the BJP despite no campaigning by Dalit Czarina referred to as Behenji itself experts say is an achievement.
The party has bagged Mayoral seats in two municipal corporations out of sixteen. Remaining 14 have been won by the BJP.
BSP won Aligarh and Meerut local body polls. Maya’s BSP came a close second in Agra, Saharanpur and Jhansi. It emerged as a force to reckon with in areas where Dalit-Muslim combination is electorally strong to challenge BJP.
Eversince BSP supremo Mayawati quit the Rajya Sabha reports have been talking of a silent churning that has been brewing within the party cadres. Mayawati has tried to consolidate its cadre in the last six months.
Reports talk of divisional level meetings on the 18th of every month, to remind the cadres that Mayawati was refused to speak on Saharanpur caste riots. Each meeting was chaired by Mayawati.
Mayawati has toured and held meetings in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The two states go to polls in winters next year.
Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress failed to open an account in the UP civic polls.
Polling was held for 16 nagar nigams, 198 nagar palika parishads and 438 nagar panchayats with an average turnout of all the three phases estimated at 52.5 per cent of the 3.32 crore voters.
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