the State that sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha, is at a crossroads. At least four major players have emerged to lay claim to 22-23 per cent of Scheduled Caste votes after the seemingly terminal decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
After a drastic drop in the BSP’s vote share in the last three Assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections—from over 30 per cent in 2007 to just 9.3 per cent in the 2024 Lok Sabha election—Mayawati’s key support base of Dalits is up for grabs.
What has made the BSP’s voters all the more restive is the power tussle within the party, which came to the fore with the expulsion of Mayawati’s nephew Akash Anand and his father-in-law, Ashok Siddharth, a former Rajya Sabha MP, amid fears that Siddharth was trying to split the party into rival camps.
