Mayawati broke the alliance obsession, BSP will contest all 243 assembly seats in Bihar alone

The bugle for the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections has not yet been fully sounded, but political movements have already heated up the atmosphere across the state.

- -Ajay Kumar Senior Journalist, Lucknow (U.P.) Mob:- 9335566111

In the meantime, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president Mayawati made a decision on Sunday that stunned all major alliances. Mayawati made it clear that the BSP would neither go with the BJP-JDU-led NDA nor join the Congress-RJD-led INDIA bloc. The party will contest all 243 seats on its own. This announcement is significant because Bihar's politics is deeply rooted in caste equations and the compulsions of alliances, and in such a scenario, a major party contesting alone can change many equations. BSP’s roots are deep in Uttar Pradesh politics, where Mayawati became Chief Minister four times with the support of Dalits. The party has always based its ideology on the thoughts of Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. However, outside UP, BSP’s influence has remained limited. In Bihar, during the 1990s and early 2000s, BSP managed to secure a decent share of votes in many constituencies. In the 2010 Assembly elections, BSP received 3% of the votes, but later that fell to just 0.38% in 2020. Talking about seats, BSP has never managed to win a single seat in the Bihar Assembly so far. In 2020, BSP did put up a strong fight in some constituencies like Gopalganj, but victory remained elusive. This history shows that while BSP has a presence in Bihar, the real challenge has always been converting votes into seats.