The Samajwadi Party’s victory saga — the party has got the highest ever tally since its formation in 1992 — has been written with a script stolen, ironically, from the BSP.
The SP sensed the anti-BSP mood and began positioning itself against the establishment almost two years before the elections were held.
Its district units fought pitched battles with the BSP at the slightest pretext, its cadres invited physical action and its leaders happily went to jail in almost every agitation. The message to the people was clear — if there was any party that could take on the might of the Bahujan Samaj Party, it was the SP. As the election unfolded, the SP campaign against BSP became increasingly aggressive with SP leaders promising to send Ms Mayawati and her corrupt ministers to jail and converting her memorials into public utility services like hospitals and schools. To win over the youth, the Samajwadi Party put Mr Akhilesh Yadav in the driving seat while Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav withdrew into the strategist’s seat.
The youth was promised enhanced unemployment allowance and laptops and the long queues outside employment exchanges even before the elections were over proved that the Samajwadi sops had been lapped up.
Akhilesh Yadav countered the charge of criminalisation when he prevented the entry of mafia don D.P. Yadav into the SP and Mulayam Singh made it a point to announce in each of his rallies that such elements would no longer be tolerated in the party.
In contrast, the BSP which had come to power on the issue of law and order demolished its own USP when it allowed its ministers, legislators and leaders to lynch engineers, create mayhem at police stations, and abduct and rape women.
The BSP slowly came to be known for sheltering criminals — a charge that was earlier reserved for the SP.
The dependency of the chief minister on a fistful of bureaucrats was another factor that led to her downfall.
She refused to see beyond what these babus wanted her to see and disconnected herself with the ground realities. In the party, she cut herself off completely with the cadres and her party coordinators also enjoyed a free run. Corruption became rampant and the system of checks and balances — both in the government and the party — collapsed.
With Ms Mayawati locked in her ivory tower, party leaders and bureaucrats indulged in scams, safe in the knowledge that nothing would reach the chief minister unless they wanted to.