Things had never come to this low for the lady who was groomed into leadership role of the dalits by Kanshi Ram. Even while her mentor was alive, Mayawati took over the reigns of the Bahujan Samaj Party, made it a winner, gave face to the dalit voice, and was a claimant for the top post in dalit politics. But all that appears to have become history. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, her party faced defeat and in
the UP assembly elections earlier this year, the party struggled and won only 19 of the 403 seats.
Many attribute her defeats to the fact that the demonetisation had cleansed her coffers, leaving her with nothing to splurge on election campaign.
On Tuesday, when she submitted her resignation from the Rajya Sabha, after deputy leader of the house cut short her speech on the atrocities against dalits, she had almost become someone with no clout or followers.
Other parties opposed to the BJP did not want her to resign hastily, for that would bring their number down by one at a time when the BJP is on an upswing and every MP from the opposition counts. Yet, the fact of the matter is Mayawati preferred to be a loner when other parties could not help prop her to power. When she first became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, it was with the help of the BJP, which was proud to have had a role in the making of UP's first dalit woman chief minister. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had described Mayawati as the "miracle girl child of Indian politics".
Today, the BJP could not be bothered about Mayawati's resignation from the upper house.
She was proud of her hold on the dalits who call her Behenji, and even the poorest of them contributed to her coffers. She claimed she could ensure her vote bank was transferred to any party she supported. But she would never do that unless the end result was her becoming the chief minister. In fact, the social re-engineering she did in UP some years ago, was to ensure others voted for her party, so that she became the chief minister.
In the recent assembly polls in UP, a combination of the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress could have theoretically halted the BJP. But it was not acceptable to Mayawati as her chances of being made CM were slim even though she maintained her vote bank was in tact. And so there was no Bihar kind of grand alliance of non-BJP parties that could contain a saffron wave.
Given their collective state, no opposition leader in the Hindi heartland can claim to swing the electorate in their favour , in their own state. And none of them can help win seats outside their state. The BSP, which had a presence outside of UP, has lost the following everywhere.
Now, Mayawati's moment of reckoning has come. She needs others more than they need her. She needs them even to be an elected member of the Rajya Sabha after April 2018, when her term ends, presuming that her resignation is not accepted on technical grounds. So far, Lau Prasad Yadav, the loudest voice for opposition unity against the BJP for 2019, has even suggested he can get her elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar. But as a senior Congress leader asked, how will that help opposition unity? She should unconditionally be part of a formation that opposes the BJP, he suggested.
Will the resignation help her stave off her diminishing popularity when there are new dalit icons like Chandrashekhar Azad of the Bhim Sena or the posthumous dalit icon, Rohit Vemula?
