The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will have no member in the Rajya Sabha after November 25, when the six-year term of its lone MP, Ramji Gautam, will come to an end.
The party already has no presence in the Lok Sabha. Mayawati went on to become the chief minister for a fourth term. The continuous decline of the party has raised questions about its hold over its core vote bank – the Scheduled Castes (SC), particularly the Jatavs. As the assembly elections in UP draw near, the battle for the SC vote has intensified with the BJP, SP and the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) competing for their support.
Because it lacks the numbers in the state assembly, while the BSP’s lone lawmaker is on the list of retirees, there is no possibility of the party getting another member in the Upper House. It will be for the first time since its Parliament debut in 1989 that the BSP, which emerged as a regional satrap and eventually attained national status, will have no representation in both Houses of Parliament. The 2012 UP assembly elections marked the turning point in the BSP’s decline. This was when the party’s tally fell from 206 seats to 80 and it was ousted from power. In the previous assembly elections, the BSP had won an absolute majority with 206 legislators in the 403-member assembly. Nationally, the shrinking of the BSP began in 2014, when the BJP – with 303 lawmakers – went on to form the government with a brute majority. The BSP, which had won 21 seats and 6.17% vote share in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, failed to win a single seat although its vote share stood at 4.19%. The BJP’s huge win in UP – bagging 71 of the 80 LS seats – was also attributed to the shift in the Dalit vote from the BSP to the party. In 2019, the party won 10 seats with a vote share of 3.67% but in 2024, it failed to win a single seat and its vote share fell to 2.06%. The SC vote bank is estimated to be 21% in UP, of which the Jatavs alone are estimated to be over 54%.
BSP’s Mixed Election Outcomes: Revival and Setbacks
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) experienced a brief resurgence in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, performing well as part of the opposition’s Mahagathbandhan alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal. However, this momentum did not carry into the 2024 elections. The BSP opted to remain independent, not aligning with either the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the Congress-led INDI alliance, resulting in a significant defeat.
