National Highway

Could deeper fears than just Income Tax Department notices be behind the Bahujan Samaj Party’s eagerness to help topple the UPA government on Tuesday? Analysts and political observers say the survival of the UPA government could seal a pre-poll alliance between the Congress and SP for the fifteenth Lok Sabha polls.

This could possibly hurt the BSP’s stated ambitions to win around 50 of 80 seats, going by arithmetic figures from the 2007 UP Vidhan Sabha elections. Should the government fall early polls are called, the impact of such an alliance could be contained.

The BSP’s voteshare in 2007 elections was 31%, up from the previous 24% thanks to its policy of appealing to all caste blocs. But the SP had also maintained its tally of 25%, but lost 48 seats.

“The Congress with its 8% vote-share could help the SP in a pre-poll alliance as lesser votes will be divided,” says political scientist Sudha Pai, author of a book on the BSP. “It would definitely limit the number of seats the BSP could get,” she says.

However, past experience shows that vote blocks don’t shift easily. In 1996 the Congress and the BSP had an alliance in which some of the Congress traditional voters voted for the BSP but not vice-versa. “The same is likely to happen if the Congress allies with the SP,” said Pai, “This could be a calculated move on the part of the SP.”

“Mayawati is standing on a fragile vote-share combination,” says Kanpur-based political scientist AK Verma, adding, “Using the Muslim card on the nuclear deal issue could drive Muslim voters to the Congress-SP as Muslims may not appreciate being pitted against something in national interest,” he said.

But not all feel that Mayawati is worrying about a SP-Congress tie up. “Vote shares are not cast in stone,” says Ajoy Bose, author of a political biography of Mayawati. “Mulayam has shot himself in the fott by joining the UPA at this time and facing defection from his party and potential loss of votes. Mayawati stands to gain the most,” he says.

AK Verma cautions that even if the Congress and SP achieve a collective vote-share of 30% plus, it is not necessarily a magic wand. “In 1996, the BJP had 34% vote-share but only 175 of 403 seats,” he says. Varma says that winning an election in UP requires building what he calls a “vertical social coalition” rather than one that is horizontal. “A vertical social coalition of several castes has the winning weight in the assembly,” he says.

To that extent the BSP may not be under threat as no other party is trying to cut through its Sarvajan Samaj politics. “The SP and the Congress are both acting in desperation to save their 19 and 39 MPs from UP respectively,” says Ramesh Dikshit, Uttar Pradesh chief of the Nationalist Congress Party. Maywati with her prime ministerial ambitions is clearly not taking any chances, numbers firmly in mind.