New Delhi: After being an influential player in the politics of Uttar Pradesh for three decades, the Mayawati-led BSP has been relegated to the margins with the party set to witness its poorest performance ever in the state Assembly polls. According to the latest trends available on the Election Commission's (EC) website, Umashankar Singh, contesting from Rasara, is the sole Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate who is leading. The party had contested all the 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Singh had first contested the Assembly polls in 2012 from the same seat in Ballia district. The BSP had won 19 seats in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and managed to secure a vote share of over 21 per cent. Five years later, it has been restricted to single digits with a vote share of 12.73 per cent. When the BSP formed the government in Uttar Pradesh in 2007, it had bagged 206 seats and a vote share of 30.43 per cent.
Observers believe that Mayawati failed to prevent her core vote base from drifting towards the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A part of the core voters deserted the BSP for the BJP as they felt that the ruling party had actually helped them through various welfare schemes. Some staunch BSP voters felt that the SP was the real force to represent the opposition space in Uttar Pradesh. The party, the observers claimed, also failed to check the narrative that it has "surrendered" to the BJP.
Several leaders such as Indrajit Saroj, Lalji Verma, Ram Achal Rajbhar and Tribhuvan Dutt, who helped shape the BSP, also left the party for the SP. Their exit from the BSP left the core voters of the party in a disarray and they looked for other options, including the BJP and the SP. Some observers were of the view that the BJP was able to win over the "non-Yadav OBC" and "non-Jatav Dalit" votes of the SP and the BSP respectively.