How BJP's divide and rule politics backfired in breaking up SP-BSP alliance
Far from weakening the new-found bonhomie between former adversaries - Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) - the defeat of the duo at the hands of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the recently concluded Rajya Sabha poll has further strengthened their bond in Uttar Pradesh.
Mayawati's clear-cut declaration on these lines has become a cause for discomfort at the highest levels in the BJP, where it was widely felt that the defeat would end up in breaking the SP-BSP alliance, which caused a humiliating defeat for BJP on two seats in the recently concluded Lok Sabha by-polls in the state.
Evidently, the BJP is yet to get over the shock of that defeat on the Gorakhpur seat that remained the political bastion of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and his guru Mahant Awaidyanath for nearly three decades, and the Phulpur seat that was vacated by UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. Notwithstanding BJP's effort to assuage hurt caused by the twin losses by the victory on one Rajya Sabha seat, it is undeniable that the two elections are incomparable. After all, Lok Sabha polls remain a direct election, while Rajya Sabha poll being an indirect election, depend a lot on manipulative politics as well as the use of money power.
To that extent, BJP's victory over the alliance, that was joined in by the Congress too for the Rajya Sabha poll, became some kind of a face-saver for the ruling dispensation which moved heaven and earth to achieve its goal. BJP's idea behind ensuring the victory on this lone RS seat at all costs was to prove that the SP-BSP alliance was weak. And this shouldn't come as a surprise because any continuation of the alliance could upset the saffron brigade's calculations for the 2019 general elections, which will determine the political destiny of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This desperation remained visible in the BJP rank and file not only all through the RS poll process over the recent past, but more in the aftermath of its victory. Yogi Adityanath was the first to issue a statement, "Samajwadi Party le to sakti hai lekin de nahi sakti." (Samajwadi Party is capable of taking benefits from others but does not believe in returning favours.)
The chief minister's obvious reference was to BSP's support to SP nominees in both Gorakhpur and Phulpur, where the party was not in the fray. Yogi was visibly trying to spread the word that SP had played smart on BSP; and while SP chief Akhilesh Yadav managed to get BSP's support in the two LS by-polls, it did not reciprocate in the RS poll. The same sentiment was echoed by other senior BJP leaders including deputy chief minister Maurya, who also left no stone unturned to affect a divide between the alliance partners by provoking Mayawati.
Yogi Adityanath went a step further the following day by attempting to re-ignite the dying embers between SP and BSP, which remained at loggerheads for 23 long years. Way back in 1995, Akhilesh Yadav's father and then state chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had engineered a physical attack on Mayawati and her party MLAs, soon after she withdrew support to their coalition government led by Mulayam. The incident, which became infamous as the "2nd June Guest House case", left so much bad blood between the two parties that their leaders did not see eye to eye for years together.
Since SP and BSP made a lethal combination in a deeply caste divided UP's social milieu, it suited BJP to go to the extent of propping up Mayawati as chief minister with its support. And the BJP leadership did that three times. Though, the BJP-BSP marriage of convenience did not last long, it surely gave Mayawati a prominent place in state politics over which she eventually managed to establish her rule entirely on her own in 2007.
Finally, it was her bete noire Samajwadi Party which humbled her party in 2012.
Meanwhile, BJP went about building up its politics of Hindu polarisation. This finally paid off reinforcing Narendra Modi's magic spell that he cast over the state in 2014 when BJP swept 73 out of UP's 80 Lok Sabha seats.
Again, BJP romped home with a record 324 seats in the 403-member Assembly in 2017.
The virtual rout of both SP and BSP compelled the old rivals to sink their bitter differences. Perhaps there was no better option for either of them to take on a seemingly invincible BJP.
The by-polls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur became an ideal ground for testing the waters for such an alliance that brought Yadavs and the larger chunk of OBCs hand in hand with Dalits. Akhilesh Yadav mustered up courage to initiate a dialogue with Mayawati who responded by assuring her party's full support to the SP nominees in both constituencies. What apparently made it simpler for her to let bygones be bygones was the fact that Mulayam, with whom she bore some kind of personal enmity, was not in the SP's scheme of things anymore. It was an Akhilesh run party now and she bore no grudge against him. Akhilesh also made a mature move by visiting Mayawati at her residence and seeking her blessings.
The softening of her 23-year-old antipathy did wonders not only in the form of victory in Gorakhpur and Phulpur but even later after the defeat of the alliance in the Rajya Sabha. Even as speculation was rife that Mayawati would start blaming Akhilesh for her candidate's defeat in the Rajya Sabha poll, the BSP supremo made it loud and clear that the defeat results would not impact the SP-BSP relations.
At a especially convened press conference, she said, "BJP is playing cheap politics by trying to link Akhilesh Yadav with the guest house incident as he had not even entered politics at that time," she said. And while giving him a clean chit, she decided to train her guns at the BJP leadership by pointing out, "If BJP was really so much concerned about that incident, then they also need to remember that the same IPS officer who headed the Lucknow police at that time, has been made the state DGP by this very BJP government now."
She went on to ask, "Does it mean that BJP now intends to get me killed so that the Dalit movement could be crushed?" She, however, offered a word of caution to Akhilesh by telling him that he should not have relied on the pledged support by indepenedent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh, better known as Raja Bhaiya. She indicated that Raja Bhaiya ditched Akhilesh and actually supported BJP in the Rajya Sabha poll.
BJP's attempt at "divide and rule" seems to have failed so far. It was amply clear now that petty issues will not be allowed to come in the way of the alliance, that is expected to become larger with Congress, Rashtriya Lok Dal and other smaller political outfits getting together to give BJP a run for its money in 2019.