Mayawati gets mandate from UP

MAYAWATI TAKES THRONE: The BSP wins power after seven rounds of polling spread over a month.

              

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Keywords: Sagarika Ghose, Battle For UP

“Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure,” said Jaitley. The BJP has won in Assembly and in the Lok Sabha with the same alliance but this time it didn’t work. “The BJP didn’t have any reason to change track in this election.”

The BSP’s caste alliance is a replica of what the Congress did in the early years of Independence. The Congress has failed to provide the opportunities Mayawati is providing to young aspiring sections.

“You can find 100 explanations for Mayawati’s success. We congratulate her—she succeeded in making a strategic alliance. But her alliance will have to face pulls and pressures from all directions because each community will have its own expectations. That’s a big challenge for her,” said Khursheed, who is the Congress president in UP.

“We had something similar to the BSP’s alliance in the days gone by and it were conflicts and confrontations that pushed us into the corner. There is no reason why the same conflicts and confrontations won’t happen to them,” said Khursheed.

Vote change in percentage

Managing a caste coalition

How is Mayawati going to manage her coalition? How will she distribute ministries among Dalits, Brahmins and Thakurs? Will she be able to do a balancing act?

Yogendra Yadav said all disputes and differences in the BSP are solved in a simple way—“one person speaks from the top, and the disputes are resolved.”

“What has happened in UP is that apart from her solid Dalit votes, Mayawati has managed to get votes cutting across all castes. This includes lower OBCs, who until yesterday were the BJP’s backbone. She has got the votes of the poor.”

Rajdeep Sardesai agreed with Khursheed that Mayawati would face a problem because of her varied alliance. “Lalu Prasad Yadav won a massive victory in 1995 in Bihar on the basis of a social coalition. But once the coalition won, people said where is the development, where is the governance. This election was about the BSP+ but the next election could be about the other BSP of Indian politics: bijli, sadak, pani. How will Mayawati deliver on that?” said Sardesai.

Rahul Gandhi’s charm fails

Rahul Gandhi, the young Congress MP, was supposed to revive his party in the UP. His road shows got crowds, but the party got fewer seats than in 2002. Did Rahul fail to deliver?

Sibal, Union Science and Technology Minister, said the Congress didn’t expect a miracle so he couldn’t blame Rahul. “We are disappointed with our 21 seats but Rahul is here to stay and he will stay such time that the Congress is revived in UP.”

“Miracles don’t happen overnight. Mayawati lost her deposit in her first elections and now is the Chief Minister, so the Congress shouldn’t be expected to work a miracle,” said Khursheed.

Is the BJP going the Congress way in UP?

The BJP portrays itself as the only national alternative to the Congress, but does the rout in UP hamper its ambitions?

Will the BJP also get wiped out of the UP map like the Congress? Should the massive mobilisation that took place after the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1991 be evaporated so quickly that by 2004, Pramod Mahajan had to say things likes “I didn’t have in karyakartas in UP so I had to get 10,000 karyakartas from Maharashtra.”