The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), once the toast of the nation for its social engineering, has been bruised and battered by the electorate in the lok Sabha elections 2014.
The rout of BSP was complete in the national Capital too, where all its seven candidates not only forfeited their deposit. The vote share of the BSP also indicates that the party is on the downside and its may recede further after having zero seats in the Uttar Pradesh. The vote share of BSP has reduced to 1.5 per cent in the lok Sabha elections as against the total Dalit vote share of 17.1 per cent in the national Capital. Though elders within the Jatavs seem to be loyal to Mayawati, the younger lots among them appeared to have broken off to the BJP.
The Modi blitzkrieg destroyed the BSP, leaving Mayawati, who once harboured hopes of becoming India’s first Dalit Prime Minister, without a single lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh. In a verdict that sent the BSP in mourning, none of its candidates could claim victory despite campaigning by Mayawati and two of her trusted lieutenants — Naseemuddin Siddiqui and Satish Chandra Mishra. The Bahujan Samaj Party had won 20 lok Sabha seats in 2009.
As per Election Commission (EC) data, the vote share of BSP has reduced to 1.5 per cent in 2014 election as compared to 7.8 per cent vote share in all seven seats in 2009 lok Sabha elections in the national Capital. In the recent Assembly polls, the party could manage just over 5 per cent vote share in aggregate and its major vote bank shifted to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which hijacked the vote share with jhaadu as their symbol. AAP’s vote share had also went up to 32.9 per cent in the lok Sabha polls from 29.49 per cent it had received in the Assembly polls in December last year. The Congress vote share had come down drastically from 24.55 per cent to 15.1 per cent.
“The party cadre in Delhi did not also receive the kind of support and aid it used to get from the State cadre. It has been decimated from UP where it began its political journey,” said a BSP leader on condition of anonymity. He added that the famed social engineering of the BSP had upper castes and Dalits along with smaller castes as the support base of the BSP. But the upper castes deserted her in an unprecedented way, while the smaller castes too left her for the BJP to leave the BSP high and dry in the 2014 elections.