Mayawati’s grand success is surely attributable to a radical shift that she was able to bring about in BSP by taking the party away from an exclusivelyDalit support base. Instead she chose to embrace the upper caste Hindus as well as Muslims, whom she baited by offering a record number oftickets. As many as 86 tickets went to upper caste Brahmins and 62 to Muslims.
The "social engineering", as the process has come to be called, appears to have paid dividends, It took the BSP to the main contestin almost each of the 403 seats -- a feat no other political party could boast of.
It was her hand-picked Brahmin--completely apolitical Satish Chandra Misra--who was detailed to carry out the new experiment , which has eventually paid really rich political dividends.By Misra’s own account, the BSP supremo was reluctant in trying the experiment . "But once she had studied the pros and cons threadbare, she gave us the go-ahead and got down to brass tacks herself", Misra told this scribe.He however credits her for "a really meticulous selection of candidates."
At her first press conference shortly after the political picture became amply clear on Friday evening, Mayawati made it a point to express her gratitude for the success to differentsections of society and particularly the upper castes, whom she had brought into her party-fold for the first time.And that is what did the magic-- the addition of a chunk of the 14 per cent Brahmin vote and a small percentage of the 18 per cent Muslim vote to her base vote bank of 24 per centDalits.
However, it was not just the caste calculations that gave BSP a clear ride to power.It was also the common perception that the only way to defeat the lawlessnessunder Mulayam’s SP and its goons, was to vote for the party that actually hasstated its intentions to punish them for their crimes, unlike the BJP who wereperceived to be hand-in-glove with the ruling combine, and could well have gottogether with the SP only to keep Mayawati out.
Interestingly, however, different political parties including the Congress, were out to take some credit for heralding Mayawati’s return to power. "Our campaign aimed at highlighting misdeeds of the Mulayam government also contributed to her victory", claimed Congress state chief Salman Khurshid.
And so did Raj Babbar the actor turned Samajwadi Party rebel who had roped in former prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh to run a sustained vitriolic against Mulayam. "After all we also helped to dentMulayam; so what if the benefit has gone to Mayawati?", said Babbar over telephone from Agra.
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On his part, however, Mulayam sought to blame it on the election commission. Emerging out of Raj Bhawan after submitting his resignation to Governor T.V.Rajeshwar asullen looking Mulayam was livid o the election commission. "The election commission is responsible for Samajwadi Party’s defeat ", he declared . "The election commission had pitted all parties against the Samajwadi Party", he added."The presence of armed para military personer at every polling booth was intimidating and created an atmosphere of terror, keeping many of them away", he said, while terming it as "an anti-democratic step." He even charged the commission of "running a parallel government."
Evidently, the election commission’s strict enforcement of laws did not go well with Mulayam, who would have obviously been happier with the run-of-the-mill election-- where musclemen can have their way and feudal lords can keep the hapless, oppressed, ordinary voter well away from the polling booths.There were lakhs across the length and breadth of the state who could exercise their right of franchise for the first time.
Sure enough, it was not just Mayawati's social engineering but her visible potential toactually be the only alternative at the hustings that could contain lawlessless letloose by Mulayam and his unbridled henchmen, and, above all, the enforcement of the rule of law by chief election commissionerN Gopalaswami, that enabled Mayawati to bulldoze her way tothis unprecedented victory.
