After the BSP’s debacle in UP, the party’s long-cherished ambitions to spread its roots in neighbouring Bihar’s caste-driven politics have come crashing with 31 BSP district presidents joining the ruling JD(U).
The BSP’s fairly-expanded party organisation in Bihar, under constant attack from the state’s own brand of identity politics and steadily drying support from Lucknow, witnessed a turmoil in the weeks following the party’s rout in UP. Seeing little prospects in staying with the BSP in the near future, as many as 31 district presidents and over 100 office-bearers joined the JD(U) in Patna on Saturday.
Most BSP leaders who quit said they felt the urge to strengthen the progress being made in Bihar under chief minister Nitish Kumar’s leadership. “Currently there is no BSP organisation in Bihar worth its name apart from the few people taking care of the palatial party headquarters in Patna,” said a senior BSP leader from Lakhiserai who joined the JD(U).
The BSP, which had unsuccessfully tried in past elections to replicate its UP-like social engineering in Bihar, will now have to hunt for new leaders to take care of its district units and find its efforts doubly harder. Analysts say the latest exodus of grassroots leaders would hurt Mayawati’s ambitions in Bihar.
In the 2010 Bihar Assembly polls, the BSP contested on all the 243 seats on its own and failed to win even a single seat despite Mayawati having addressed 14 public meetings across the state. Senior BSP leaders like UP unit chief Swami Prasad Maurya and Gandhi Azad had also campaigned. In Bihar’s 2005 Assembly polls, the BSP had contested in 212 seats and won in five.
Starting with the 1990 Bihar Assembly polls, the BSP had had grand ambitions for this state that has wide socio-political similarities with UP. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, BSP contested all the 40 seats in Bihar on its own and failed to win any, but its candidates stood second in 10 seats.