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Mayawati’s tie-up with Deve Gowda in Karnataka has sparked speculation on who she will prefer togo along with
Mayawati’s tie-up with Deve Gowda in Karnataka has sparked speculation on who she will prefer to go along with. SUNIL GATADE writes
Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) chief Mayawati, though her stars are down, could turn the tables on her rivals in the Lok Sabha polls by going in for a pre-poll tie-up in Uttar Pradesh for the first time in two decades.
This possibility is being talked about in political circles in hushed tones in the wake of the mercurial Mayawati going in for an alliance in faraway Karnataka with former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular). She is keeping away from two Lok Sabha bypolls in Uttar Pradesh scheduled next month.
Options before parties
The last time Mayawati and her mentor and BSP founder Kanshi Ram had entered a pre-poll alliance was with the Congress under P V Narasimha Rao in undivided Uttar Pradesh in 1996. Under that deal, the BSP had contested on 296 seats and Congress on about 125 (the assembly then had 425 members). While she did the alliance in Uttar Pradesh from a position of strength with the Congress on the defensive in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992, political observers are saying that the BSP supremo has been forced to go in for the tie-up in poll-bound Karnataka because of the BJP factor.
While no one in the BSP would openly admit this, BJP strategists in Karnataka insist their party is bound to benefit by the coming together of Mayawati and Deve Gowda. There are many cases pending against Mayawati and people close to her. There are controversies and the CBI is looking into them for years. The leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, had alleged in Parliament early this month the Opposition had been under attack like never before under the Narendra Modi dispensation.
An opposition leader from Uttar Pradesh said Mayawati entering into an anti-BJP alliance in the state in the backdrop of her Karnataka experiment could be a possibility only if the BSP supremo felt “less pressured” from the CBI by then.
Another leader who had once worked closely with Mayawati in the BSP but is no longer in the party said the BSP chief would not create trouble for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh if her assessment was that Modi would become prime minister again after the 2019 polls. In such a situation, she would continue to play the ‘solo’ card in view of the cases.
The Congress factor
The talk in a section of the Congress is that after Rahul Gandhi took over as the party chief, it has opened a dialogue with Mayawati for a possible alliance in Uttar Pradesh.
While there will never be a formal acknowledgment, a party leader said that Mayawati understood the problem of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and could make the most of it if she finally obliged.
“If Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have to win in Uttar Pradesh, there should be an alliance,” said a non- Congress leader, emphasising that the grand old party would have to play second fiddle to the BSP or the Samajwadi Party and agree to contest in fewer than 10 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
An anti-BJP alliance is possible if the BSP and the SP are given 35 seats of their choice and the Rashtriya Lok Dal two, the leader said, implying that the Congress would have to swallow its pride in Uttar Pradesh if it wanted to defeat the BJP.
Mayawati and her party have so far remained aloof from opposition meetings in New Delhi for building a united opposition ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. SP leader Akhilesh Yadav has made it clear that his party has no plans as of now to go in for an alliance in Uttar Pradesh.
A section in the Congress is now realising that the alliance with the SP in the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh was a blunder because people saw the Yadav-led party as a second “Muslim League” and therefore helped consolidate the BJP’s Hindutva vote bank.
So the Congress is now more focused on the BSP. In the last Lok Sabha polls, a desperate Congress had pleaded with Mayawati for an alliance, sensing the danger of a resurgent BJP under Modi. But she had refused. The Congress could secure just two seats in Uttar Pradesh — Rae Bareli and Amethi.
For Mayawati, an alliance with the Congress could be the last thing on her mind, realising that her Dalit votebank considers the grand old party as its second home.
Before the last assembly polls, a section in the BJP had wanted an alliance with the BSP, arguing that it should allow Mayawati to run Uttar Pradesh and focus on an alliance with her in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. At present, BJP and its allies have 73 of the 80 seats.
Mayawati has often termed the BJP and the Congress as two sides of the same coin, branding them as “saapnath” and “naagnath” but has not hesitated to align with them.
BJP strategists in Karnataka insist their party is bound to benefit by the coming together of Mayawati and Deve Gowda