We’ll soon know if the opposition is ready to take on Modi in India
The talk in Delhi is of how Mayawati wants to be India’s next prime minister. She is a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), whose chief voter-base is UP’s dalits. Her last stint as chief minister ended in 2012. In the 2014 parliamentary election, her party got 19.2 per cent of the vote in UP, making it the country’s third highest vote-getting party after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party — but she got no seats. In fact, the only electoral victory her party has lately been a part of was when it supported her traditional rival, the Samajwadi Party, in two parliamentary by-elections in March; they won both.
The next big political event in India comprises assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Telengana, Chhatisgarh and Mizoram, in November (the results will be known on December 11). The Congress and Mayawati, as a prelude to allying for the 2019 parliamentary election, had sought an electoral tie-up in the north Indian states. The negotiations did not work out. Mayawati claimed that the Congress was being too stingy; the Congress blamed her for overreach in states where her presence was a distant third.
Announcing the failure of negotiations, Mayawati carefully stated her respect for Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia. This is possibly because Sonia publicly hugged Mayawati during a public event. It apparently emboldened Mayawati to think that she is indispensable to the Congress, and thus she negotiated hard, as she will do before the 2019 election.
It is also common knowledge that the Narendra Modi government has her under pressure. Her brother Anand Kumar is said to have grown richer by $200 million during her tenure as CM. The Damocles’ sword of the Central Bureau of Investigation — which the Supreme Court called a “caged parrot”, meaning it was wielded as a weapon by the government of the day — hangs over her head. She is thus circumspect in her criticism of Modi, and acts nonchalant about hobnobbing with the opposition.
However, in the
Congress thinking,
Mayawati is punching above her declining weight. Her core vote — her committed voters who comprised 16.4 per cent in the 2017 poll — is eroding. She is aging and running out of ideas. A younger, more firebrand lot of dalit leaders are emerging, like Chandrashekhar, recently released from incarceration, and his Bhim Army. Their dalit followers would likely reduce her vote share to under 15 per cent. Hence, the Congress thinks, Mayawati would need the Congress just as much as it needs her, even though it only received nearly seven per cent of the votes in the 2017 assembly election. That seven per cent is rising these days.
The Brahmins of UP (14 per cent of the population) are having a relook at the Congress due to the poor governance by CM Yogi Adityanath. If the Congress does well in the coming state elections, the Muslims of UP (19.8 per cent of the population) may look at it also, especially considering that their traditionally favourite Samajwadi party has suffered a split between the popular former CM Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav. It is not a split that threatens Akhilesh’s hold over the mass of the party, but it is enough to erode voters in each district.
Though the conventional wisdom is that if the BSP and SP tie up for the 2019 poll they can together mop up 50 of the state’s 80 seats and thereby prevent Modi’s return. Thus, Mayawati’s ambition of becoming PM. Conventional wisdom is also that it does not matter if the Congress is part of this alliance or not. If Mayawati is serious about her ambition, however, she would include the Congress. Without it, the BJP is still a contender in UP, critical to winning a parliamentary majority, and her ambition becomes moot. With it, the possibility of a post-poll arrangement is brighter, despite the Congress president’s repeated assertion that he himself would be his party’s prime ministerial candidate if the BJP loses power.
From the Congress point of view, it would only look seriously at the matter after December 11. If it wins two of the three states, it is in a strong bargaining position. Only then will we get a real measure of each of these leaders, and how capable they are of replacing Modi.
If the BSP and SP ties up for the 2019 poll they can together mop up 50 of the state’s 80 seats and thereby prevent Modi’s return