Mumbai
| Why this could be the make or break election for the Bahujan Samaj Party in Maharashtra |
In 2004, the BSP polled over a million votes in the State without winning a seat
“This time around,” says a confident Suresh Sakhare, “the Bahujan Samaj Party will deliver a result in Maharashtra.” The party’s State vice-president points out that every political force must now take the “BSP factor” into account. “We are not spoilers,” Mr. Sakhare told The Hindu. “This time we will be winners. Please note that the prospect of Behenji as Prime Minister is rallying the poor and deprived to our flag everywhere.” Ms. Mayawati’s rally in Nagpur a few days ago was indeed impressive.
No party can take the BSP lightly, especially in the Vidarbha region. The party has also caused problems — right from candidate selection onwards — to the two main Fronts in places outside Vidarbha like Hingoli, Nashik and Pune. “The BSP is certainly a factor to reckon with,” says author and political analyst Dr. Anant Teltumbde. “This time they might just make that breakthrough.”
In the 2004 Lok Sabha poll, the Congress-NCP combine would have bagged 31 instead of the 23 seats in Maharashtra were it not for the BSP, which polled over a million votes State-wide without winning a seat. It secured around eight per cent of the vote in the State, over 11 per cent in Vidarbha. There were eight seats across the State where the BSP caused the rout of the Congress-NCP, polling far more votes than the margin of their defeat. The Congress lost in Erandol and Solapur and the NCP lost in Thane and Osmanabad precisely due to this. These seats are in the regions of Khandesh, Western Maharashtra, Mumbai-Konkan and Marathwada respectively.
Yet, it was in Vidarbha, where it polled over half a million votes, that the BSP hit the Congress-NCP worst. Here, it wrecked them in four seats — Bhandara, Wardha, Ramtek and Chandrapur. In 2009, it again threatens to hurt them in these very seats, in some of which it could increase its vote share. Also in others such as Ghadchiroli-Chimur where it hopes Raje Satyavan Rao will win the party its first Lok Sabha seat from Maharashtra. However, the effect of delimitation on its chances remains to be seen.The BSP is contesting all 48 seats in the state.
Two things have changed since 2004. The BSP is no longer a party for only Dalits. (Interestingly, in Bhandara, it has not made a major issue of the Khairlanji atrocity.) Nor is it just an alternative to the various factions of the Republican Party of India. The latter has been decimated. In this election, no one even speaks of the RPI. Meanwhile, the BSP is fielding candidates from several communities — including Brahmins, Muslims, OBCs and others. In Pune, the BSP’s D.S. Kulkarni, a Brahmin could hurt both BJP’s Anil Shirole and Suresh Kalmadi of the Congress. In Nashik too, its Brahmin candidate Mahant Sudhirdas Pujari, will cause problems for all others in the fray.
In the 2004 Assembly polls the BSP polled 8.6 lakh votes in Vidarbha, bettering its 5 lakh votes in the Lok Sabha elections just months earlier. It caused the defeat of the Congress-NCP in 13 seats and the BJP-Sena’s rout in 11. In effect, it decided the winner in over a third of the region’s 66 assembly seats. Only major electoral promises made by the Congress and an impressive campaign by Sonia Gandhi enabled the Congress-NCP combine to fare better than it did in the national elections.
Every third vote in Vidarbha is that of either a Dalit or an adivasi. “The Dalit vote here could be as high as 17 per cent while the adivasi vote could be around 15.6,” says Raju Mishra. He is the author of Janadesh, the definitive book on polls in the region. “However, the Dalit vote is far more focussed than that of the adivasi, which tends to be more divided. But all have to contend with this.” In the rest of Maharashtra, the Dalit vote has been differently, sometimes contradictorily, estimated at between 10-12 or 10-14 per cent. (There are different views on who is a ‘Dalit.’) The past few years have seen large chunks of that vote move away from the RPI to the BSP.
This could also be a make or break election for the BSP. The non-Congress/NCP, non-BJP/Sena vote has been rising in the State. Thus far, the BSP has been the gainer. Its ‘social engineering’ has seen it move beyond Dalit votes and candidates. This election could decide whether the party is relegated to the role of a perpetual spoiler. Or it could catapult it past the competitive threshold of Maharashtra electoral politics. If that happens, people will begin viewing it as a real alternative to the major Fronts and it would mark the start of a new phase in the State’s politics.
