After drubbing, future tense for Akhilesh, Maya

A saffron storm in Uttar Pradesh swept aside chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and his predecessor Mayawati on Saturday but the assembly election results could have a bigger, more devastating impact on the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) national president has age on his side to set his house in order, but the poll outcome could mark the the beginning of the end for BSP chief Mayawati.

Akhilesh’s takeover of SP from his father Mulayam Singh Yadav had left the Yadav family bruised ahead of the elections. The CM promised his father victory as a gift, but the patriarch and his brother Shivpal Yadav were left sulking.

If that were not enough, Akhilesh ignored party seniors to forge an alliance with the Congress, which detractors within the party thought betrayed a lack of confidence.

“Akhilesh has to take sole responsibility for SP’s defeat and mend fences with senior members of his family before re-energising the party,” said a senior party leader, declining to be quoted.

But putting the party back on track could be tough for Akhilesh, who is set to take guard for a new inning as opposition leader in UP. He might face rebellion as many party members still believe in Mulayam and sympathise with Shivpal.

Akhilesh, a party leader said, will also have to take a call on continuing the alliance with Congress after the drubbing. The results indicate that his development agenda did not work while the SP’s traditional vote bank — Yadavs and Muslims — got fragmented.

Akhilesh now faces the challenge of defragmenting this vote bank besides purging the party of corrupt and criminal elements. Having projected himself as a youth leader, he came across as anti-women by fielding rapeaccused minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati form Amethi.

It would be tougher for Mayawati to revive the BSP as a force to reckon with, political analysts said. This was the third successive defeat for the party — it lost power to SP in the 2012 assembly polls and failed to win a single seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Mayawati’s failure in recapturing power has put a question mark over her ability to infuse energy into the party that formed a majority government in 2007 and bagged 20 seats in the 2009 parliamentary polls.

The 2017 election outcome also indicates that rivals have breached the upper caste-backwards and Muslim coalition that Mayawati had weaved since the BSP’s birth in 1984.

“Mayawati betrayed the party ideology by ignoring backward caste leaders and promoting upper castes in her party. She paid the price,” said ex-BSP leader Daddu Prasad, who floated the Bahujan Mujti Morcha.