Going strong

The Uttar Pradesh byelection results negate the perception that the Mayawati government is becoming unpopular.

It is common knowledge among Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) activists and Uttar Pradesh bureaucrats that Chief Minister Mayawati is fond of gifts. The BSP chief normally accepts gifts on her birthday and, more often than not, these are in the form of cash to bolster party funds. But on April 16, approximately a month before the BSP government was to observe its first anniversary on May 13, Mayawati received an exceptional gift in the form of an election victory.

Her party made a clean sweep of the five byelections held in the State three to the State Assembly and two to the Lok Sabha outplaying all its political opponents, including the principal opposition in the State, the Samajwadi Party (S.P.), as well as the two mainstream national parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was a superior victory not merely in quantitative terms. Almost all the qualitative dimensions of the results were also in favour of the BSP.

First, the quantitative aspect. The BSP retained the two Lok Sabha seats Azamgarh and Khalilabad as well as the Bilgram Assembly seat and wrested the Colonelganj Assembly seat from the Congress and Muradnagar from an Independent.

The Congress and BJP candidates lost their security deposits in four seats. With these victories, the BSPs strength in the 403-member Assembly has risen to 215.

In the two Lok Sabha seats, the BSP improved upon its victory margin in the 2004 general elections. The byelections were held following the disqualification of Members of Parliament Ramakant Yadav of Azamgarh and Bhalchand Yadav of Khalilabad, who had defected from the BSP. Ramakant Yadav contested on the BJP ticket in Azamgarh and Bhalchand Yadav was the S.P. candidate from Khalilabad this time.

In 2004, Bhalchand Yadav won on the BSP ticket by 27,023 votes; this time Bhishm Shanker alias Kushal Tiwari of the BSP defeated him by 64,632 votes. Interestingly, Bhalchand and Tiwari had just switched places. In 2004, Tiwari was the S.P. candidate here. Ramakant Yadav won from Azamgarh in 2004 as the BSP candidate by 6,968 votes. This time the BSPs Akbar Ahmed Dumpy defeated him by 54,251 votes. The S.Ps Balram Yadav was pushed to the third spot.

In the Bilgram Assembly constituency, BSP candidate Rajni Tiwari defeated her nearest rival, Vishram Singh Yadav of the S.P., by 38,168 votes. This, too, was an improvement on the BSPs victory margin of 12,500 votes in the 2007 Assembly polls. In Colonelganj, the BSP leaped from its third position in 2007 to emerge first. The Congress, which won the seat in 2007 by nearly 23,000 votes, was pushed to the third place while the S.P. retained its second position. The BSPs margin here is 9,737 votes.

In Muradnagar, Rajpal Tyagi, who won as Independent in 2007, retained the seat, but this time as the BSP candidate. His victory margin jumped from 3,020 in 2007 to 6,853 in 2008. His nearest rival was Ayub Khan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).

In qualitative terms, one of the first things the BSP leadership highlighted about the byelection results was that it has once again asserted its political hold over different geographical segments of Uttar Pradesh. Azamgarh, Khalilabad and Colonelganj are in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bilgram is closer to central Uttar Pradesh and Muradnagar is in western Uttar Pradesh.

A significant feature of the results is that Muslims continue to repose faith in the BSP despite the perception that some socio-political faux pas of the BSP leadership have angered them. The Muslim vote is a crucial component in both Azamgarh and Khalilabad Lok Sabha seats and in Muradnagar Assembly seat. The BSP won Muradnagar in Ghaziabad district despite the RLD fielding a Muslim candidate.

The results also show that Mayawatis political plank of Dalit-Brahmin bhaichara is also holding on in spite of occasional expressions of resentment from both communities. In Bilgram and Khalilabad the winners were Brahmins.

Politically, the byelections have negated, to a large extent, the perception that the Mayawati government is becoming unpopular. The perception got strengthened when the BSP lost the Ballia byelection in early 2008, despite the sizable presence of Dalits and Brahmins in the constituency. Mayawati had fielded a Brahmin candidate here. By all indications, a large section of her Dalit constituency had refrained from voting in that election.

Apart from this verdict, the massive crowds that former Chief Minister and S.P. president Mulayam Singh Yadav had been drawing in almost all his public meetings over the past three months was also seen as an indicator of the anti-incumbency trend against Mayawati. However, the S.P. rank and file seem to be unable to translate the popular support evident in public meetings into votes.

A specific Yadav dimension of the elections also does not augur well for the S.P. In 2004, when Ramakant Yadav and Bhalchand Yadav contested as BSP candidates, they were seen as mavericks who were bold enough to take on the most popular Yadav leader, Mulayam Singh.

The fact that they made peace with the S.P. president in about two years is perceived to be the result of the pressure exerted by the Yadav community on them. Yet, the S.P. lost Azamgarh and Khalilabad, considered to be Yadav bastions. That S.Ps Balram Yadav finished third behind BJPs Ramakant Yadav is another indication of the reverses suffered by the S.P.

The polls have given a new impetus to the marginalisation of the two mainstream national parties, the Congress and the BJP. The BJP, which ruled the State on its own just about a decade and a half ago, ended up with 1.35 per cent vote share in Muradnagar, 3.5 per cent in Colonelganj and 5.03 per cent in Bilgram.

It is clear the Congress understanding that the BSP is losing ground is completely misplaced. The party has been making overtures to the S.P. on this premise. It is to be seen whether the byelection results would lead to the Congress rethinking of its strategy. If that happens, Mayawati would strive to strike a political bargain with the Congress for a hefty price.

In the immediate aftermath of the elections, however, she rubbed salt into the Congress wound by stating that the results have exposed the newfound love of the Congress for Dalits. She also added that the results gave a clear indication that the BSP would reap a major harvest in the next Lok Sabha elections.

The immediate reaction of the S.P., the BJP and the Congress was to accuse the ruling party of misusing the official machinery to win the elections. The rank and file of the BJP and the Congress, so used to recurrent defeats, may well be taking this reverse too in their stride, but that is not the case with the S.P. cadre.

They had cherished hopes of bouncing back in these elections. Their complaints about the misuse of official machinery may seem to mollify the cadre at present, but if the principal opposition wants to get back to its number one position in the State, it may have to go beyond excuses and come out with a clear, well thought-out political strategy.