‘Behan Mayawati’ caught on to Rahul Gandhi’s mission impossible and she went on a verbal rampage against the Lok Sabha LoP, wary of the implications of Rahul Gandhi’s depredations. Some would say Rahul Gandhi lost the plot, but did he? All that Rahul Gandhi did was that he saw the slightest of openings and wedged his foot in the door!

Whoever is guiding Rahul Gandhi has his eyes set on building a Muslim-Dalit vote-bank along the lines of the Samajwadi Party’s ‘Pichda Dalit Alpsankyak’ vote-bank. There is newfound confidence in the Congress that Muslim voters have gravitated to the grand old party and the Dalit vote-bank wouldn’t mind joining the party!

Rahul Gandhi cannot get it out of his head that but for Mayawati’s refusal to join hands with the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, the Congress-SP-BSP trio would have swept Uttar Pradesh and bagged a bigger majority of the 80 Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha seats instead of the 43 the Samajwadi Party-Congress partnership won without the BSP in play.

Rahul Gandhi wants to correct the situation. Bring around ‘Behan Mayawati’ or challenge her to “Bring it on!” But Mayawati isn’t willing knowing that a Congress-BSP alliance would rob the Bahujan Samaj Party of its core vote-bank, the Scheduled Castes who have always politically bankrolled Mayawati’s quest for her own political aggrandizement.

Rahul Gandhi is eyeing Mayawati’s core vote-bank and wouldn’t mind making inroads. The Congress had won 99 Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 parliamentary elections and must be blaming ‘Behan Mayawati’ for falling short of the target to oust Prime Minister Narendra Modi and end the NDA rule at the Centre.

The question remains: Why the need to get into a spat with the once mercurial Bahujan Samaj Party supremo who is not only a hard nut to crack but also capable of flying off the handle given enough reason or rhyme. Parties like the Samajwadi Party and the BJP learned long ago that 'Behan Mayawati' is best left to her devices.

Mayawati is an unknown quantity to even the best of acquaintances. LoP Rahul Gandhi shouldn't have challenged Mayawati to a verbal spat. The "war of words" didn’t go down well for the Congress. Mayawati took full advantage of the Congress’ sorry performance in the just concluded Delhi assembly elections and went hammer and tong against him.

The Congress fared worse than the Yamuna did under Kejriwal’s 10 years in this latest edition of the Delhi assembly elections. The Congress failed to cash in on AAP’s double anti-incumbency given Kejriwal’s battered political persona. Reports of the Congress candidate losing their deposits are still all over the media.

The outlook for the Congress isn’t something to write home about even if the Congress remains the best bet to rejuvenate the INDIA bloc; perhaps the only "national party" of consequence in the INDI-Alliance.

Rahul Gandhi needs schooling of a different kind and Mayawati's remarks do not bode well for the grand old party. Her comment that the Congress contested the Delhi polls as “BJP’s B team due to which BJP has come to power” is a common thread binding almost all non-Congress opposition parties.

“It is a common discussion that this time Congress contested the Delhi Assembly elections as (the) BJP's B team, due to which BJP has come to power here. Otherwise, Congress’ condition would not have been so bad in this election that this party could not even save the deposit of most of its candidates,” Mayawati posted on X.

The war of words between Rahul Gandhi and ‘Behan Mayawati’ was initiated by Rahul Gandhi when he visited his parliamentary constituency Raebareli and engaged with a group of Dalit students, questioning the BSP’s political stance of not aligning with the Congress in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections for the 80 Uttar Pradesh seats.

"The BJP would not have won the 2024 Lok Sabha polls if Mayawati had not stayed away from the INDIA bloc," Rahul Gandhi told the youth. There is no respect lost between Mayawati and Rahul Gandhi who made it worse by questioning Mayawati’s political acumen, never mind her politics!

That being said, Rahul Gandhi needs a lesson in political wisdom. The Gandhi scion should listen to his head. Whoever is Rahul Gandhi’s political coach, should caution him on making a difference with flawed political discourse. With his turbulent outburst on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi set the stage for a frayed Friday and then he proved that he was way out of his political depth.

Politics is about stormy petrels at each other's throats and the BSP Chief hit back on Friday. Mayawati accused Rahul Gandhi of having a “dual character and casteist mindset”. She asked Rahul Gandhi to “look into his own self before pointing fingers at others and especially at the BSP chief.”

Not done, she said, “The new BJP government formed in Delhi has the challenge of fulfilling all the promises made during the elections, especially those related to public welfare and development, on time, otherwise the condition of this party may also become as bad as that of Congress in the future.”

'Behan Mayawati' was in rare unbeatable form and Rahul Gandhi had touched a raw Mayawati nerve when he spoke with the Dalit students of Raebareli, "I wanted Behenji to fight alongside us against the BJP, but for some reason, she did not. That was deeply disappointing. If all three parties had united, the BJP would never have won.”

Rahul Gandhi chose not to tell the Dalit students that the Samajwadi Party won the most number of Uttar Pradesh's Lok Sabha seats in 2024 because "Mayawati chose not to align with the Congress" and the Samajwadi Party contested 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh in alliance with the Congress while ignoring Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party.

Fact is, there is no love lost between Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati and with Rahul Gandhi's diatribe against 'Behan Mayawati', the Congress hopes to profit. The next big opportunity in Uttar Pradesh comes in 2027 and right now the party at the very top is the BJP, not least because of the Mahakumbh.

The Congress and the Samajwadi Party, forget the Bahujan Samaj Party, can do nothing. Even less so if they keep fighting each other. Rahul Gandhi’s icebreaker “I believe Kanshi Ram Ji laid the foundation, and Behenji (Mayawati) built upon it” was welcome, but Mayawati wasn’t far off the truth: “Whenever BSP allied with Congress or other casteist parties, our base vote got transferred to them. This wasn’t ever reciprocated. The BSP always suffered losses.” How right! (IPA Service)