On the back foot

Published : Jun 20, 2008 00:00 IST

The near-decisive victory of the BJP and the virtual decimation of the JD(S) have upset the plans of the BSP and the UNPA.

in New Delhi

Attending a seminar in New Delhi a day before the counting of votes in the Karnataka Assembly elections, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra was the picture of confidence. The BSP does not make tall claims, but we would throw a few surprises in Karnataka too, just as we did in Uttar Pradesh last year, he said in his interaction with a few delegates. Without getting into the specifics, the BSPs second-in-command indicated that the party expected to win five to 10 seats and come up with a credible performance in another 25 to 30 seats. Though this did not amount to much in the 224-member Assembly, Mishras interaction contained enough suggestions that the BSPs performance was bound to impact the Congress negatively more than the other parties in the fray. The tone and tenor was that Karnataka would throw up yet another election verdict that bolstered the confidence of the BSP on the national scene.

However, the results belied Mishras claims. The BSP gathered just 2.74 per cent of the total votes polled in the State, which represents a mere 0.99 per cent increase from what it got in the 2004 elections. Conservative estimates within the BSP were that the party would garner 8 to 10 per cent of the votes. However, the party polled fewer than 5,000 votes in 187 constituencies. In fact, the party polled fewer than 2,500 votes in about 150 constituencies. It got more than 10,000 votes in just 12 constituencies and came second in two seats: Hanur in the south and Bidar in the north.

Contrary to the party leaderships expectations, the results showed that the BSPs vote share had not impacted the Congress negatively any more than it did other parties. An analysis of the results showed that the BSP impacted the chances of the Congress decisively in barely three constituencies though the cumulative votes of the Congress and the BSP were more than that of the winning candidate in 15 seats. However, the cumulative votes of the BSP and the BJP were more than that of the winning candidate in 14 seats. Similarly, the cumulative votes of the Janata Dal (Secular) and the BSP were more than that of the winning candidate in eight seats.

The verdict from Karnataka is a dampener for the BSP, particularly its supreme leader and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, at a time when the party plans to become part of the power structure at the Centre. There were several reasons for the party to expect substantive gains in Karnataka.

To start with, nearly 15 per cent of the States electorate is constituted by Scheduled Castes (S.Cs), which form the core electoral and political constituency of the BSP. Second, the party had roped in a senior leader, P.G.R. Sindhia, who had been part of several Ministries in Karnataka and had consistently taken a stance against efforts to communalise the States politics. Third, Mayawati herself had canvassed extensively in Karnataka with the intention of making a decisive impact. But the electorate did not seem to have been enamoured of all this.

Party leaders, including Mishra, however, have put on a brave face. He claimed that whatever the BSP had done was an achievement and would prove to be a source of encouragement for party workers to make greater efforts when it came to the more crucial parliamentary elections. He was of the view that the BSP had made the desired dent in the Congress side in several seats. He added that the party would come up with much better performances in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Chhattisgarh, which are to have Assembly elections by the end of the year. In all these places, the partys primary target is to bring down the vote and seat share of the Congress, which was for long considered to be the fundamental political choice of several Dalit communities.

The significant base of the BSP in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh could help it achieve the above objective. It can also hope to break new ground in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan if it is able to pursue effectively its formula of building up a social, political and electoral combination of Dalits and Brahmins. But, the party may have to devise a detailed, constituency-wise election plan in these States if it wants to avoid a repeat of the Karnataka reverses. While the BSPs setback in Karnataka is conspicuous, political forces that sought to build up a Third Front by forging a combination of regional outfits such as the Samajwadi Party (S.P.), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) have also been forced onto the back foot by the BJPs victory in the south Indian State. These parties and their political combination, the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), did not have much electoral stakes in Karnataka. Yet, the near-decisive victory of the BJP and the virtual decimation of the JD(S) the most prominent non-BJP, non-Congress political party in the State have upset their plans. More so because the BJP and its partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would now use the forthcoming Assembly elections to consolidate their political space and launch an all-out campaign to recapture power at the Centre.

In such a situation, many parties in the UNPA may have to think in terms of alliances with the Congress, which, despite the many reverses it has suffered in recent Assembly elections, retains the position of the largest secular party in the country. Manoeuvres in this direction are already visible in Uttar Pradesh, where the leaderships of the S.P. and the Congress are seen to be pursuing a common line, especially in their opposition to the Mayawati-led BSP government.

Given the political situation in Uttar Pradesh and the rest of the country, there is every possibility that the S.P. and the Congress could discover a commonality of approach in other areas too. This, in turn, would rock the solidity of the UNPA as some of its constituents, such as the TDP and the INLD, are essentially anti-Congress outfits whose political planks are built on a long-standing opposition to the Congress in Andhra Pradesh and Haryana respectively. In spite of these potentially hazardous prospects, the UNPA leadership has averred that it would stand together on a strong anti-Congress, anti-BJP political plank. The UNPA leadership has repeatedly stated that its natural allies are the Left parties and that it would evolve a political course for the future in association with the Left.

This point was reiterated when S.P. leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh met Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat a day after the Karnataka results were announced. The meeting apparently discussed the differences between the Left and the S.P. vis-a-vis the Womens Reservation Bill, which has been introduced in the Rajya Sabha. Talking to Frontline, Amar Singh said that despite minor differences in issues such as the Womens Reservation Bill, the S.P. and the Left parties were united on 90 to 99 per cent of the issues, including the principled and sustained opposition to the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. He pointed out that the S.P. was in favour of the Womens Reservation Bill but would like to have defined quotas for the S.Cs, the Scheduled Tribes (S.Ts) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) within the 33 per cent reservation for women.

Karat said too much should not be read into the BJPs victory in Karnataka. The BJP has been advancing its communal Hindutva agenda in Karnataka systematically over the past two decades. It scored over 20 per cent of the votes in the 1999 and 2004 elections through the pursuit of a communal agenda. This time round it got a boost because the JD(S), which ran a coalition government with the BJP earlier, was accused of having betrayed it. The Congress was not able to mount an effective and credible challenge to the BJP. It was also disadvantaged by the price rise and it was seen as not having done enough to resolve the agrarian crisis. Karat was of the view that sustained and principled political action against the forces of communalism and neoliberalism was the only course to reassert the primacy of secular politics.

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