By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
The decimation of Mayawati-led hitherto strong Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh and the revival of the virtually defunct Dalit outfit of Bihar, Lok Janshakti Party, deserve an objective study. The former failed to open its account notwithstanding the fact that it managed to get about one-fifth votes of UP while fighting alone, whereas in Bihar the LJP won six seats when it got just 6.4 per cent votes. The only difference is that it contested in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Mayawati paid the price for the ekla chalo re (go it alone) policy, while on the other hand the LJP chief, Ram Vilas Paswan, jumped on the NaMo bandwagon at the nick of the time. In both the states all the Scheduled Caste reserved seats––17 in UP and six in Bihar––have been bagged by the BJP-led alliance.
Ram Vilas Paswan
Though the BSP failed because a sizeable section of its voters, including Dalits, shifted to the BJP, yet with 19.82 per cent it polled third largest number of votes. In 2009 BSP got 27.42 per cent votes.
Though six of the seven LJP candidates won the party could get only 6.4 per cent of votes, which is much less than RJD (20,1 per cent), JD(15.8 per cent) and Congress (8.4 per cent). RJD could win only four seats whereas Janata Dal (United) and Congress two each. Interestingly RJD and Congress fared so badly notwithstanding the fact that they fought together and polled 28.5 per cent votes.
Thus it is the BJP votes, which got transferred in a big way to the LJP and ensured victory to six of its candidates. The BJP on its own got 29.4 per cent votes in Bihar and its other allies Rashtriya Lok Samata Party just three per cent. The saffron party won 22 seats while RLSP three.
In Bihar Paswan did not deem it fit to swin against the current, so at the fag end of February he entered into alliance with the BJP leaving Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal high and dry.
Thus, the BSP with 80 MLAs in UP could not win a single seat in Lok Sabha election whereas the LJP, with not a single legislature in Bihar, won six seats. The LJP had one MLA, who too crossed over to the Janata Dal (United) after the party tied-up with the saffron brigade. Not only that while UP has about 21 per cent Dalit votes, in Bihar their percentage is 15.1.
On the eve of election many political analysts had questioned the very wisdom of the BJP when it decided to leave seven out of 40 seats for the virtually dormant essentially Dalit outfit, the LJP. There was a revolt like situation in the BJP too with leaders like Giriraj Singh, Ashwani Choubey, Kirti Azad, Dr C P Thakur and Ramadhar Singh––all of them NaMo loyalists––refusing to attend the March 3 Muzaffarpur rally of Narendra Modi as they did not want to share platform with Paswan and his family. They publicly criticized senior party leader and former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi for inducting into the NDA a leader known for promoting family rule, corruption, crime and caste politics. They warned the leadership that SuMo is taking the BJP in wrong direction by roping in party-hopper like Paswan in the NDA. They cited the example of 2002 when Paswan quit from the Vajpayee cabinet in protest against the Gujarat riots.
But by March 10 NaMo rally in Purnea the saffron party managed to overcome the crisis and these leaders agreed to attend it. Yet there was doubt in a section of party rank and file that many upper castemen would not vote for Paswan, his brother and son. But the Modi wave help all of them win from their respective constituencies.
The irony is that even during the Ram Temple movement years of 1990s the Bahujan Samaj Party did not fare so badly in UP though it was still a fledgling outfit.
A comparison of two decades of politics of Mayawati and Ram Vilas Paswan suggests that the latter had always adopted a different path. When the BSP supremo would go closer to the BJP he would distance himself from the saffron brigade.
Though Paswan always claimed that he resigned from the Vajpayee cabinet in 2002 after the Gujarat riots the truth is that he actually quit the government just after the Bharatiya Janata Party decided to support Maywati form the government after 2002 Assembly election in that state. The riots in Gujarat started after the Godhra incident of February 27, 2002 whereas Paswan quit the Vajpayee cabinet on April 29, 2002 that is two months later, when the situation almost got normalized in that state.
Had the BSP supremo decided to go in alliance with the BJP in UP––though it was not in her mind––the LJP leader would never have gone with the saffron party. The advent of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati in 1990s greatly reduced Paswan’s stature as a Dalit leader of Hindi-speaking belt. But unlike Mayawati he could never become the chief minister of Bihar. In fact he hardly emerged as a Dalit leader, but just the leader of one of its 22 castes in the state, Dusadh, who form less than four per cent of the population.
UP has about 21 per cent Dalit yet Mayawati is the undisputed leader of Ravidas or Jatav caste, which form about two-thirds of SC population. The Ravidas (or cobblers) have a sizeable population in the leather-producing centres of west and central UP. Querishis and some other Muslim castes are also in good number in the tannery business. Professional competitiveness and rivalry sometimes lead to clashes between the two. Such quarrels have the potential to turn into Hindu-Muslim riots.
That is why when Jat-Muslim riots took place in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli it did not take much time to become Hindu-Muslim violence as Jatavs too became a party. This notwithstanding the fact that Jat-Jatav relationship too is not so cordial in this belt.
In this sharp communal polarization on the eve of Lok Sabha election the BSP, till recently a major player, found itself pushed into the corner. Yet organizationally it is still a much superior outfit than LJP in Bihar.