Mulayam Singh Yadav is convinced the wily Mayawati fooled his son and still has a hold over him. Otherwise why would Akhilesh Yadav agree to carry on with the alliance even after the dismal SP performance? Mayawati announced the gathbandhan will not terminate and Akhilesh has maintained silence. Mulayam is acutely aware that the SP was cornered into fighting seats where it had no chance to win at all, like in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Varanasi, MM Joshi’s Kanpur, Rajnath Singh’s Lucknow and Gen. VK Singh’s Ghaziabad. In contrast the BSP got seats where the BSP was sure to win and where the SP stood second in 2014.

So, naturally, the BSP is keen to continue with the alliance though Mayawati is making a big noise about how Muslim voters did not vote the BSP. The Samajwadi Party is supposed to hold sway over Muslim vote and if Muslim voters did not vote BSP, then it’s a direct charge that the SP did no keep its part of the deal. But to soften the blow and to take the edge out of the charge, Mayawati has sacked a prominent Muslim face from her party accusing him of engaging in anti-party activities while that gentleman has retaliated with hurling extortion charges against Mayawati.

Of course, neither the BSP nor the SP is ready to concede that the Muslim voters could have voted for the Congress, especially after Priyanka Gandhi was introduced into the equation. The gathbandhan is also not coming down to believe that maybe the caste arithmetic came unstuck with Modi’s ‘Sabka Vikas’ yojanas like Pradhan Mantri Awaas and LPG. Both the caste-based parties were for once given the go by, by the very castes which were their raison de etre. That if the yojanas brought acche din to the Dalit, Balakote could have struck a chord with the “martial Yadav.”

That being said it’s also a fact that in several Uttar Pradesh seats the BSP lost by ridiculously slender margins, like in Meerut and Machlishahr. In the latter, BSP candidate T Ram lost to his BJP rival by a mere 181 votes. Contrary to what was thought, SP and BSP cadres were not working in tandem at the grassroots, mostly because lower rung leaders of both parties were bothered about the long term. The gathbandhan did not extend that far down and that far ahead to make a difference.

The gathbandhan will be tested when the bypolls to the 11 assembly seats that fell vacant because of the 2019 general elections are announced and held. These are mostly seats from which BJP MLAs won through to the Lok Sabha and also the assembly seat of Samajwadi Party’s Azam Khan who beat Jayaprada from Rampur. Akhilesh Yadav appears to still have confidence in the gatbandhan but other members of the Yadav clan do not share his trusting manner. Three of the family lost the general elections and that included Dimple Yadav, Akhilesh’s better half.

But while Mulayam Singh Yadav is smarting, Mayawati has quickly gotten over her disappointment of not becoming Prime Minister! Right up to D-day and regardless of the exit polls, which predicted a landslide for Narendra Modi, Mayawati was preparing to spearhead a shot at becoming Prime Minister with maybe at the most 30 BSP and 25 Samajwadi Party MPs, such was her confidence in the gathbandhan’s success, a belief which was shared by Akhilesh Yadav, too. But in the end it was Mulayam’s prophecy that Narendra Modi will return to power which rang true.

A question that comes and goes is whether GE 2019 spells the beginning of the end of caste-based parties like the BSP and the SP. The answer to that depends on what Modi 2:0 will shape up to be. A hint has been given by Modi when he said there are only two castes left in India: One comprising the ‘poor’ and the other of those who want and will strive to lift the poor out of poverty. The second includes big business and politicians of all parties including those of the BSP and SP. Another five years of Modi’s yojanas if they are implemented with rigour can render caste toothless in the electoral arena. If you hear laughter then do not be surprised though this is not a joking matter.(IPA Service)