Explained: what Mayawati hopes to achieve by going alone in 2024 general elections

Billed as the de-facto PM candidate of the Left-backed “Third Front” in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati has seen her support base gradually eroding in Uttar Pradesh and other states.

Her declaration that she will go solo for the 2024 general elections came as no surprise as the BSP, by Mayawati's own admission, hasn't fared well whenever it announced pre-poll ties with other parties. She said that allying hasn't benefitted her party as the allies' voter base, especially the upper caste, doesn't get transferred to the BSP.

The BSP has traditionally relied on Dalits, Muslims, and OBC votes. But as pollsters have shown, the BJP has managed to make inroads into Dalit and OBC communities, the SP gained a larger chunk of Muslim votes.

In the 2022 assembly elections, the BSP could win only one seat, securing 12.7 per cent of the votes in a state where Dalits account for 20 per cent of all voters and half of the Dalit voters belong to Mayawati’s Jatav caste, CSDS data showed.

CSDS data showed that among non-Jatav Dalits, 41 per cent chose BJP, 23 per cent SP and 27 per cent BSP.

Its alliance partner Samajwadi Party gained at the cost of the BSP by securing 32.06% with 111 Vidhan Sabha seats.

Out of the 20 per cent Muslim votes in UP, the Samajwadi Party secured around 79 per cent and at least eight per cent votes went to the BJP, which is an increase of one per cent over the 2017 assembly elections.

Mayawati hopes that by going alone, Dalit and Muslim votes might get split.