‘It’s death of a movement’: Former Mayawati aides ‘pained’ at BSP decline, but ‘not surprised’ | Political Pulse News

The BSP president since 2003, and its omnipotent leader since Kanshi Ram’s demise in 2006, Mayawati hit her peak in 2007, when the party led by her came to power in Uttar Pradesh with a majority on its own for the first time. After the BSP was deposed in 2012, the string of expulsions by Mayawati began.

While the BSP remains the preeminent party of Dalits, with a dedicated vote bank in UP, it does not have a single Lok Sabha seat currently, getting only 2.06% votes nationally despite contesting 488 of the 543 seats last year. In the 2022 UP Assembly elections, the party got just one seat, with a vote share of 12.88%, a drastic fall from the 20%-plus it would get in the state.

Mayawati’s former lieutenants, spread out in the Samajwadi Party, BJP and Congress now, expressed regret at the state of the BSP. Speaking to The Indian Express, they accused Mayawati of moving away from the ideals of B R Ambedkar and the movement started by Kanshi Ram, “under the influence of money, family and a few select leaders”.

Among BSP founders and Mayawati’s confidants, Siddiqui was among the influential ministers during the 2007-12 BSP government in UP. But in 2017, five years after she lost power to the SP, Mayawati expelled Siddiqui along with his son, accusing him of “anti-party activities” and corruption. In 2018, Siddiqui joined the Congress.

While he has no connection with the BSP any more, Siddiqui told The Indian Express, “I feel pain that the party that was founded by Kanshi Ram ji… that movement is getting weaker… It hurts to see the house that you built collapsing.”

On how BSP leaders had left over the years, Siddiqui said situations developed forcing them out. Hinting at Mayawati’s unbridled control, he added: “Kisi bhi cheez ki adhikta patan ka kaaran banti hai (The excess of anything is a cause for downfall).”

Siddiqui went on to name Ashok Siddharth as one of the reasons the BSP finds itself in a mess, questioning the leadership’s “family relations” with people like him. Last month, Mayawati expelled Siddharth, whose daughter is married to her nephew Akash Anand, from the BSP. Later, while expelling Akash, once named by her as her political heir, Mayawati held Siddharth as the reason.

The BSP could still be revived if it went back to Kanshi Ram’s strategy of “standing firm on principles and not being in a haste”, Siddiqui added. “Kuchch paane ke liye kuchch khona padta hai. Ab yahan sirf paane-paane ka chal raha hai. Khona padega (To get something, one has to be ready for sacrifices. Now, everyone only wants to make gains. Be prepared to lose).”

Advising the party to do more to hold on to its cadres, Siddiqui talked about how he had risen from the ground, starting with forming a polling booth committee. The BSP also gained by including in its ranks leaders from different oppressed castes and communities, which was no longer the case, he said.

However, Siddiqui said, he continued to respect “Behanji (Mayawati)” for what she had done to strengthen the party along with Kanshi Ram. “I am not her opponent. I still call her iron lady. She is a tall leader. She was my leader.”

One of the leaders outside the BSP’s core base of Jatavs who rose under Mayawati was Swami Prasad Maurya, seen as its biggest OBC face. In 2016, he quit the BSP accusing Mayawati of “auctioning party tickets” for the 2017 UP Assembly polls.

Maurya told The Indian Express that the BSP’s decline started when it moved away from Kanshi Ram’s core slogan of “Jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski utni bhaagidari (Representation in proportion to population)” to, what he dubs, “Jiski jitni tayyari, uski utni bhaagidari (Representation as per preparation)”.

“That led to a surge of thailishah (moneybags) in the party. Ground workers were neglected. One by one, workers and leaders left,” Maurya, who moved from the BJP to the SP and is now with no party, said.

About Mayawati’s flip-flops on Akash Anand, Mauyra said the BSP chief makes such abrupt changes “only to remain in the headlines”. “Assigning or withdrawing responsibilities will not help the BSP,” he said.

Indrajeet Saroj, a BSP veteran and Dalit leader, who was a minister in the Mayawati government, was among those expelled by her after the 2017 UP defeat. He joined the SP, which appointed him as its national general secretary, and he is currently an SP MLA.

Saroj said things were fine in the BSP till 2003, when Kanshi Ram was in control and Mayawati his deputy. “But after 2003 (when she became president), Behanji made a series of wrong decisions, there were allegations of money being demanded for tickets, and she stopped giving representation to different oppressed communities.”

According to Saroj, one leader to blame for this change in the BSP was Satish Chandra Mishra, the party’s Brahmin face and a lawyer, who has survived Mayawati’s many purges. “Even the media once described the BSP as ‘Brahmin Satish Party’. MLAs and old-time party cadres were ignored while unelected people were made Cabinet ministers. She gave tickets to dhannaseths (the wealthy)… That upset the cadres,” Saroj said.

“A mission can’t be run by dictatorship, but only by bhaichara (brotherhood). But Behanji kept removing leaders who had a support base,” he said.

The result was that “a big movement – the Bahujan movement — has finished”, Saroj said. “Kanshi Ram used to say, ‘Satta-viheen samaj intezar nahin karta (A powerless society does not wait)’. The day you become powerless, your community will get detached from you. The same has happened with the BSP.”

Expressing the hope that Mayawati can change course, Saroj said: “Now she is going after her family as well. That a four-term CM changes her decisions so frequently is hardly a sign of wisdom.”

Another BSP founder-member now out of the party is R K Chaudhary. Once a close associate of Kanshi Ram, Chaudhary was expelled from the BSP in 2001 but taken back in 2013 in the hope of attracting the Pasi Dalit vote (Mayawati’s core base are the Jatavs).

In 2016, Chaudhary quit the BSP. He joined the SP a year later, then moved to the Congress, but in 2021, returned to the SP. He is now an SP MP.

According to Chaudhary, the only way “Kanshi Ram’s movement and Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s Mission” can be saved is by removing Mayawati and her team. “Nobody can save the movement from drowning under the leadership of Mayawati and S C Mishra,” he said, claiming that many senior leaders had left or were expelled because of Mishra. “Hundreds have been sacrificed.”

Chaudhary claimed SP president Akhilesh Yadav was now occupying the space vacated by the BSP, having reframed his party plank as that focused on ‘PDA (pichdda, Dalit, alpasankhyak)’ – “just like Kanshi Ram had developed Bahujan samaj”.

Jai Prakash Singh, who joined the BSP in 2003, was its national vice-president when he was expelled by Mayawati in 2018, apparently over his remark that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi can never aspire to be prime minister due to his “mother’s foreign origin”.

He claims to be working for the BSP “independently” now, and said his programme “Mission Bachao, Desh Bachao (Save the Bahujan Mission, Save the Country)” hopes to connect with “sarva samaj (all communities)” going beyond politics.

Singh said frequent changes in the party organisation show “the BSP is not able to decide what to do”. “Cadre camps are stopped, leaders of different communities have been removed… The bhaichara committees to connect castes and communities are not working.”

With differences now developing even within Mayawati’s family, Singh said, the worry is what would happen to Kanshi Ram’s legacy.