The natural alliance will last long. The opportunistic alliance will have to collapse naturally at a given time. Good for the country as it could eliminate one of the most cynical and opportunistic electoral alliances to exercise regional clout for personal ambitions. BSP is now becoming very unstable. It changes allies for every election. There is a source of uncertainty in state politics. Hopefully, the voters will decisively reject her next time. Nothing strange! A congregation for convenience cannot continue forever. This gives the impression that politicians have realised that caste politics arithmetic wouldn’t work. The new India now votes for development and these political parties should come up with new and innovative development agenda.
This type of uncertainty was expected. Fortunately, people of India did not prefer such a coalition in the recent election. Parties like these could not identify or distinguish between personal and public interest. Their motive is to earn money through power and position. Rat and frog alliance is over now. As Modi said, case chemistry has mauled caste arithmetic. Sans Tamil Nadu, the whole nation has taught a bitter lesson to the communal and caste parties. Rat and frog alliance is over now.
The alliance formulated in UP was much with the speculation of caste politics in its favour, since it fails to produce the desired result, the two arch rival is likely to stick to their former position of fighting each other. In the long run, this would be good for democracy as the party has realised that they should no longer be relied on caste politics given the result in up. Hope a healthy competitive democracy waits.
BSP has never shown itself as a reliable partner. It overestimates its nuisance value and has never delivered on anything as promised. Younger leaders can never emerge in BSP as long as Mayawati is at the helm. Mayawati asked her colleagues to prepare to contest in the by-election to the 11 seats that fell vacant after the MLAs, including nine of the BJP, got elected to the Lok Sabha.
The BSP has in the past shied away from contesting by-polls and even in 2018, the Gorakhpur, Kairana and Phulpur seats were won on SP and RLD symbols as the three parties came together to stitch together an experimental understanding which was formalised in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. It is too early to say it’s over unless both leaders say it publicly.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
