 "UP Assembly elections 2027: As elephant’s long shadow fades, can Rahul Gandhi win over UP’s Dalit voters?")
Lucknow: Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) seems to have lost much of its political strength in Uttar Pradesh. The party won 206 seats and formed the government in 2007, but it now has no MLA in the state assembly.
Mayawati left office in 2012 after completing a five-year term. The BSP had expected to make a comeback in the 2017 assembly election, but the party’s decline continued. Its tally fell from 206 seats in 2007 to one seat in 2022. The party’s lone MLA, Umashankar Singh, later died, leaving the BSP without representation in the House.
The electoral strength of the BSP has also fallen. It secured around 12% of the vote in the 2022 assembly election and 9.3% in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The party won no Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh in 2024, but its vote share still gives it weight in close contests. A vote share of around 10% can affect the result in constituencies where the main parties are separated by a small margin.
This is why the BSP’s vote base has become important to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress. The parties are looking at sections of voters who could move away from Mayawati’s party in the coming electoral cycle.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly raised issues concerning Dalit rights, the Manusmriti, alleged atrocities against the community and the purification row involving party president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Those tracking Uttar Pradesh politics see this as part of the Congress’s attempt to rebuild a social base among voters who once formed an important part of its support.
The Congress traditionally relied on a combination of Brahmin, Dalit and Muslim voters in the state. The political realignment of the 1990s changed that equation. Muslims moved towards the SP, Dalits consolidated behind the BSP and upper castes, along with sections of the OBC population, moved strongly towards the BJP.
The weakening of the BSP has created a new opening. The Congress is looking to regain some of the Dalit support it lost over the years, while the SP is also working to increase its support among the community voters.
The Jatav community is important in this contest because it forms the core of the BSP’s traditional vote base and accounts for around 10% of Uttar Pradesh’s population.
With the BSP losing electoral strength, political observers believe sections of the community voters may start looking at other parties. A sizeable section is not seen as naturally inclined towards the BJP, giving the SP and the Congress an opportunity to build support among these voters.
The Jatav community is important in this contest because it forms the core of the BSP’s traditional vote base and accounts for around 10% of Uttar Pradesh’s population. Their alliance benefited from support among sections of the Kurmi community, which helped improve their electoral performance. Their calculation is that a larger movement of Dalit voters could have an even greater impact on assembly election results.
The BJP has traditionally worked to build support among non-Jatav Dalits. The Congress and the SP are now looking at the Jatav vote, creating the possibility of a new contest within the Dalit electorate.
The party’s 2022 assembly vote share stood at 12.88%. The BJP received 41.29%, the SP 32.06%, the Rashtriya Lok Dal 2.85% and the Congress 2.33%. The combined share of parties such as the CPI, CPM and NCP was below 0.2%.
The numbers show why the BSP cannot be measured only by the number of seats it wins. Its voters are spread across the state, and even a smaller vote share can affect the result where the contest between the leading parties is close.
With the party’s presence in the assembly now gone, the question for the BJP, the SP and the Congress is where these voters go next. Gandhi’s focus on Dalit issues and Akhilesh Yadav’s efforts to reach out to the community are taking place against this changing political equation in the state.
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