Lucknow: Just when everyone was ready to write her off, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati is back. After lying low for some time, the 68-year-old former Uttar Pradesh chief minister is trying to revive her political fortunes and project herself as the real protector of the Dalit and backward communities.
Waking up to her party’s repeated electoral setbacks, she is trying to regain her core political base by taking up issues concerning backward communities, abandoning her reservations about contesting bypolls, revamping the party organisation, holding press conferences and becoming proactive on Twitter, now known as X.
The Dalit leader—who defied caste and gender to rise to become the head of India’s most populous state—Monday dismissed speculation about retiring from politics. She said she was committed to the BSP’s self-respect movement until her last breath.
Her statement came after her party participated in the August 21 Bharat Bandh called by Dalit organisations against the Supreme Court judgment on the “creamy layer” and sub-classification of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) reservations.
Mayawati—affectionately called behen ji—also claimed credit for the Centre’s decision to withdraw its controversial lateral recruitment scheme for civil service posts.
On Tuesday, Mayawati was unanimously chosen as her party’s national president for five years at the BSP’s national executive meeting at its Lucknow headquarters.
Politicians and analysts ThePrint spoke to see her recent moves as a sign of her realisation that the BSP is facing an existential crisis with its already shrinking vote bank shifting to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Azad Samaj Party (ASP) chief Chandra Shekhar Aazad emerging as an alternative to the BSP.
Aazad is a first-time MP from Nagina who defeated both the SP and BSP candidates.
With a section of non-Jatavs already shifting to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the BSP faces a bigger threat from the SP and ASP given their appeal among her vote bank of Jatavs and Muslims, say political analysts. The BSP drew a blank in the last Lok Sabha election, securing 2.04 percent votes compared to 3.66 percent in 2019.
According to BSP leaders, Mayawati has found a revival opportunity in the Supreme Court ruling endorsing the sub-categorisation of SCs/STs and suggesting exclusion of the “creamy layer” from SC/ST reservations.
The BSP—which emerged as the political arm of the All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) set up by party founder Kanshi Ram along with D.K. Khaparde and Dina Bhana—has latched on to the reservation issue with Mayawati projecting herself as the “real benefactor” of backwards and Dalits.
She has repeatedly taken to X to demand a Constitutional amendment to undo the Supreme Court judgment and place SC/ST/OBC reservations in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution, which contains a list of laws that cannot be challenged in courts.
She appealed to the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision at her first press conference on the issue on 4 August. “Jo hua hai bahut bura hua hai (whatever has happened, is very bad),” Mayawati said. “Hardly 10-11 percent people (SC/STs) would have become strong (due to reservations); the rest 90 percent are still in shambles.”
The Supreme Court judgment has also galvanised BSP workers who had been demoralised after repeated poll losses, especially their showing in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
While 56 percent of non-Jatav Dalits voted for the SP-Congress alliance in the Lok Sabha elections, 25 percent of Jatav Dalits voted for the alliance, according to a poll by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) reported by The Hindu.
Many BSP workers took to the streets during the Bharat Bandh against the judgment after a long break of eight years when the BSP leader advised her party against participating in demonstrations.
BSP leader M.H. Khan said behen ji has always done politics for the cause of the Dalits and Bahujans. “It is a fight between 85 percent (Bahujans) and 15 percent (upper castes). If behen ji doesn’t talk about the rights of the Bahujans, will the RSS talk about it?”
Another BSP leader said with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi projecting himself as a messiah of the backwards and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav succeeding in grabbing the votes of Dalit and backward communities in the Lok Sabha polls, the BSP chief sees the Supreme Court judgment as an opportunity to project herself as the “real benefactor of the communities”.
Also read: 0 Lok Sabha seats, dipping vote share, no second-rung leadership — BSP faces existential crisis
More OBC-Muslim faces & focus on bypolls
Mayawati and the BSP are pulling out all the stops to revive their political fortunes after their Lok Sabha defeat. As part of its efforts to reclaim its voters, the party has reversed its position on by-elections and will fight all 10 seats in the upcoming assembly bypolls.
Dates for the bypolls have not been announced yet. But BSP has already revamped its district and Vidhan Sabha-level committees and is inducting more OBC and Muslim faces with an eye on the bypolls. It has also reduced the membership fee to Rs 50 from Rs 200.
While the BSP hasn’t officially declared its candidates for the bypolls yet, state BSP president Vishwanath Pal told ThePrint the party has finalised five candidates, for the Majhwan, Phulpur, Katehari, Milkipur and Meerapur seats. “We have declared them as Vidhan Sabha in-charges. In BSP, those declared in-charges go on to fight elections.”
The distribution of seats aims to ensure a caste balance. A BSP coordinator said two of the in-charges come from the Dalit community and the three others were a Muslim, a backward and a Brahmin.
Ramgopal Kori, a Dalit has been declared as its in-charge for the reserved assembly seat of Milkipur. Former Azad Samaj Party leader Shah Nazar—considered close to ASP president Chandrashekhar Aazad—has been declared as the party’s in-charge for the Meerapur assembly seat. Apart from them, the party has named Shivbaran Pasi from the Dalit community, Amit Varma who belongs to a backward caste and Deepu Tiwari who is a Brahmin as its in-charges of the three assembly seats, Pal confirmed.
Another BSP coordinator told ThePrint on condition of anonymity that the party has focused on having an OBC in-charge in all reserved Vidhan Sabha constituencies to maintain caste balance. The BSP has also appointed a Dalit as its in-charge of the general Majhwan seat, sending the message it is not behind the SP. The SP has been highlighting how it gave tickets to Dalits for two general seats—Ayodhya and Meerut—in the Lok Sabha election.
“The BSP is the only party that thinks about the Dalits, backwards and minorities and the rest are all sham,” said Pal.
He added, “PDA (Samajwadi Party slogan of pichchde, Dalit, alpsankhayak) is only an excuse and is actually an alliance of some members of the SP family. SC/ST/OBCs should not consider them their own.”
Through the selection of its in-charges, the BSP isn’t only sending a message to the Dalits and backwards, but it is also sending a message to the ASP, which made its debut in Parliament with its chief Chandra Shekhar Aazad’s Lok Sabha victory.
How Mayawati is embracing change
Apart from the political moves, the BSP chief is also opening up to the media after largely being critical of it in the past. Mayawati addressed only one press conference last year but has already had two this month after the poll loss. In a departure from her normal style, she even answered questions from the media at these conferences. “Behen ji has been tweeting on all major issues for quite some years now,” said a district president.
“It is true that behen ji has not been open to mainstream media like other parties and our party has borne the brunt. In today’s world, one may do anything but if the media doesn’t show you, you are nothing,” the BSP functionary added.
Mirza Asmer Beg, professor of political science at Aligarh Muslim University, told ThePrint the party’s existential crisis has forced Mayawati to change her style of functioning.
The BSP had begun taking the Dalits for granted but Mayawati had now realised her voters had flocked to the SP, he said, emphasising that even a section of the Jatavs, her core constituency, did not vote for her.
“While BJP has poached her voters, losing voters to BJP is not as dangerous for BSP as it is to lose them to SP which is also a caste-based regional player addressing the backwards,” said Beg. “This is why, she seems to be imitating Akhilesh Yadav in a variety of ways like elevating a Dalit leader on a general ticket along with taking the bypolls seriously.”
Beg, however, said it remains to be seen how far these moves will help the BSP’s revival as Chandra Shekhar Aazad is fast emerging as an alternative Dalit voice and Akhilesh Yadav is poaching her Jatav votes too.
Shashikant Pandey, former head of the political science department at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU), said the change in Mayawati’s style after the Lok Sabha setback was better late than never. “While this realisation has come very late, it seems she has finally realised that if her party has to remain in the contest in UP, they have to change their style of functioning. Mayawati realises that the SP gained not only because it worked on the ground but because it changed its style of functioning,” Pandey said.
Adding, “The huge setback to the BSP in the Lok Sabha polls seems to have resulted in this change of style and it seems people close to her have advised her to embrace this change because there is little party democracy in the BSP. While she never acknowledged this, it may have finally weighed on her that the 10 seats she got in the 2019 general elections were because of SP with which BSP had allied back then.”
Pandey said Mayawati may also increase her accessibility to the public soon. “Mayawati still enjoys respect within the Dalit community. Only time will tell how much her efforts will fructify because voters have also matured.”
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
Also read: How Akash Anand’s return as Mayawati’s successor could shake up battle for Dalit votes in UP