The Brahmin will blow the conch, the elephant will go to Delhi. Mayawati’s BSP, which came to power in UP in 2007, gave this slogan at that time. There were many such slogans, through which the BSP tried to woo the upper castes and especially the Brahmins. Gave tickets to Brahmins in large numbers and they won. Then when the government was formed, many leaders including Satish Chandra Mishra, Nakul Dubey, Ramveer Upadhyay also got a stake in it. But then in 2012, the Samajwadi Party returned to power, even after this, the BSP remained the main opposition party with a vote share of 25 percent.
2017 results were wakeup call for BSP
After the victory of SP, its face became Akhilesh Yadav and took over as CM, but the situation changed rapidly and in 2014 BJP got the power at the center. After this it also intensified the focus on UP and won more than 300 seats for the first time in 2017. The BJP had done a clean sweep in a way and the second number party SP was also reduced to 47 seats. But a bigger setback than that came to the BSP, which was not even the main opposition party and had to be content with 19 seats. Thus this situation came almost two decades later, when the BSP was not even the main opposition party in the state.
Too much focus on Brahmins was useless for BSP?
The 2017 election could have been a wake-up call for Mayawati, but she did not take it seriously. Instead of taking to the streets on issues like Hathras, Mayawati always depended on cadre and social equation. Political experts believe that this also created an image in the Dalit class that Mayawati is not serious about their issues. The creation of such an image in the Depressed Classes on the one hand and the entry of the upper castes seeing the BJP strong on the other, was a double blow for Mayawati. Its impact is visible in the results of the 2022 assembly elections.
Now Girish Chandra Jatav has been made the leader of the party in Lok Sabha
In the name of preparing for the elections, Mayawati was continuously talking about their oppression in the Yogi Raj by holding a Brahmin convention since a few months ago. But it did not show any effect on the ground. This is the reason that now Mayawati is once again seen moving towards her core Dalit vote bank. In that too, his special focus is on mobilizing the Jatav community with the party. This is the reason that by replacing Ritesh Pandey, who comes from the Brahmin community, he has now made Girish Chandra Jatav of the Jatav fraternity the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha. Apart from this, Shiromani Verma has been made deputy leader from Other Backward Classes.