Maya Is No Illusion

After staying under the radar for much of the campaign, the BSP leader is emerging as a decisive factor in eastern UP.

- Ajit Kumar Jha

Mayawati is a mystery, a political enigma that pundits fail to fathom and pollsters often underestimate. No one predicted her decisive victory in the 2007 assembly elections (when she won 206 of 403 seats), no one knows how she became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh three times before that, twice with outside support from the Bharatiya Janata Party and once by forming an alliance with the Mulayam Singh-led Samajwadi Party. Given her phenomenal bargaining strength with rivals and her uncanny ability to bounce back after a political setback, Mayawati remains the most pivotal player in UP politics. Will she repeat 2007 in 2017?

As elections in UP enter the crucial slog overs with the last two phases, reaching the eastern frontier, the economically backward Bhojpuri-speaking Purvanchal region, where per capita income is half that of western UP, a fierce new political polarisation, something most polling agencies glaringly missed, is becoming evident: a ferocious fight between the BJP and BSP, both brutally battling for the anti-SP, anti-incumbency vote. Purvanchal is poor, Mayawati tells the crowds at her rallies, your children go for jobs to Mumbai. Don’t the BJP-Shiv Sena goons humiliate your boys in BJP-ruled Maharashtra? The crowds roar ‘yes’. Once elected, Mayawati promises, she will create a separate state for Purvanchal. The message is direct, focused and powerful.

In the 2012 assembly polls, the SP had swept Purvanchal, winning 50 of the 89 assembly seats, while current alliance partner Congress won 7. The BJP cornered 11 seats, and the BSP 13 (the Quami Ekta Dal, which has recently merged with the BSP, won 2). The crucial question in 2017 is how many of the 57 seats will the SP-Congress alliance manage to retain in a competitive three-cornered contest?