What went wrong for BSP?

Though the Bahujan Samaj Party won only 4.7 percent seats in Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, it managed to secure a vote share of 22.2 percent more than Samajwadi Party's 21.8 percent which won around 11.5 percent seats.

It would be pertinent to see if both the parties join hands in future like they did in 1993. The alliance formed had removed BJP from power by bringing down BJP's tally to 117 in 1993 from 221 in 1991. The saffron party had secured the score in the wake of Ram Mandir Movement.

In this year's UP Assembly elections, the overemphasis on Dalit-Muslim combination as route to power seemed to have backfired for the Dalit party. In its first list of 100 candidates, party chief Mayawati had fielded the maximum of 36 Muslim candidates in Western Uttar Pradesh where the minority community had significant presence. But, only one Muslim candidate Aaaslam Choudhary rose to victory from Dholana by defeating BJP's Ramesh Chandra Tomar. However, two Brahaman candidates of BSP, the former Power Minister in Mayawati Government Ramveer Upadhyay from Sadabad and Shyam Sunder Sharma from Mant won elections from this region.

Tomar contested against Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Buddha Nagar Lok Sabha as Congress candidate in 2014 General Elections but quit the party in the eleventh hour. Following this, he joined BJP in an election rally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Indirapuram. Tomar was BJP MP from Ghaziabad before Rajnath Singh and would have been a strong 'minister material'. In the second list of 100 candidates, Mayawati fielded 22 Muslim but all of them lost the elections. Five Muslim candidates won from Eastern UP where law and order is said to be better than western UP. Among the 19 elected MLAs of BSP five are Brahamans, two each of OBC, Kshatriya and Rajbhar. Millennium Post had indicated about reserve polarization on January 7, in its news "BSP has only two additional seats to offer Dalits in UP'.

The overreliance on Muslim votes of Mayawati had reached the extent where the Dalit party had offered 100 tickets to Muslims which is more than 14 tickets for Dalits.

Mayawati has fielded only 86 Dalits, just one ticket more than the mandatory Constitutional requirement as per reservation norms. In the 403 member house of UP Assembly, 85 seats are reserved for SC/ST category and every political party is bound to field only Dalit candidates from those

reserved seats.