Making a comeback without contesting

NEWDELHI: Late on Wednesday night, Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav drove up to Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati’s house on Lucknow’s Mall Road to thank her for supporting the SP bid in Gorakhpur and Lucknow.

The moment was significant at multiple levels.

Akhilesh’s father, Mulayam Singh, and Mayawati shared a deep rivalry.

Akhilesh himself had replaced Mayawati as chief minister in 2012. The two parties and their social base — of OBCs and Dalits — have fought each other on the ground.

His acknowledgement, however, represented a turning point.

And at the centre of it lies the person who was marked politically irrelevant less than a year ago.

Mayawati has lost three elections in a row — 2012, 2014 and 2017. Her key aides have quit. Outside power, her patronage structure has weakened and she is reduced to her core vote of Jatavs from commanding the support of wider Dalit communities across sub-castes.

Yet Mayawati has also held over 20% of the vote election after election. Her voters also ‘transfer’ their votes more willingly than other social groups when the party line says so. And so, while BSP did not even contest this election, her signal to the party to support SP benefited it tremendously. It prevented a fragmentation of the anti BJP vote and re-established her importance in state and national politics.

Even without contesting, Mayawati is back as a factor in

2019 polls.