The death of Uma Shankar Singh, the lone Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, from Rasra in Ballia district, marks a watershed moment in Indian politics. For the first time since 1989, the Uttar Pradesh assembly will not have a BSP MLA. Come November 2026 and BSP’s only Rajya Sabha MP will also retire, leaving it without representation in the parliament as well. BSP, as a political party, occupies an important political place in India’s democratic
Atrophy of the elephant: How BSP lost Uttar PradeshTechnically national, the BSP was pretty much restricted to being an Uttar Pradesh party
The BSP was recognised as a national party in 1997. Its founder Kanshi Ram started his politics from Punjab. However, Uttar Pradesh is where it managed to break political ground and eventually storm the gates of power. This can be seen even in the overall state-wise break-up of BSP MLAs and MPs. Of the 696 MLAs the party has had so far, 564 or 81% came from Uttar Pradesh alone. Of its 86 Lok Sabha MPs, 76 are from Uttar Pradesh. This underscores both the success and failure of the BSP’s larger political project. It managed to win India’s largest state but could not really find traction for its larger ideology outside it.
BSP’s Uttar Pradesh success came on account of pragmatism rather than radical politics
The BSP entered the Uttar Pradesh Assembly for the first time in 1989, winning 13 seats with a vote share of 9.4%. Over the next two decades, the party steadily expanded its electoral base. Between 1993 and 2002, Mayawati served three terms as Chief Minister through coalition arrangements with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and later the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The party reached its electoral high point in 2007 when it secured an absolute majority, winning 206 seats, 51.1% of the Assembly-with a vote share of 30.4%. Mayawati became the first and only Dalit Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh to complete a full five-year term. The BSP’s 2007 victory, and its aftermath, however, was rooted in a kind of social engineering which tried to aggressively woo the non-Dalit including upper caste Hindus (Singh himself was one, a Rajput). This is best seen in the social-composition of its MLAs in Uttar Pradesh leading up to 2007.
The BJP’s rise in 2014 has almost destroyed the BSP
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BSP failed to open its account in Uttar Pradesh despite polling close to a 20% vote share. The 2017 assembly elections provided an illusion that the BSP was still in the fray with both the BSP and the SP polling about 22% vote share and finishing far behind the BJP which won a landslide with 312 MLAs in the assembly of 403. However, their moment of reckoning came in the 2019 national elections, when despite the SP and BSP burying historical hatchets and coming together, the BJP polled close to 50% of the vote share in Uttar Pradesh and won 62 seats. Within months of the results, Mayawati announced a parting of ways with the SP and the BSP has contested the 2022 and 2024 elections on its own in Uttar Pradesh. The beneficiary of this process seems to have been the SP, which has added to its vote share in both these elections and even managed to finish ahead of the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. BSP’s vote share is now in the ballpark of 10% in Uttar Pradesh, not very different from the population share of Jatavs, its core support base among Dalits.
What we understand...
The roots of BSP’s current political predicament can be attributed to various factors. Its top leadership’s complete inertia to enthuse even its own rank and file, its failure to pivot meaningfully to the existing political polarisation in Uttar Pradesh and the country at large and succumbing to the usual sin of promoting dynastic politics despite having inherited a radical base of grass root organisers are some of them. Politics is a winner-take-all game and it will take a miracle to revive the BSP immediately. But its historical contribution as a vanguard of social justice in Indian democracy will always remain.
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