Lucknow: Neither had the Bahujan Samaj Party nor any one else including the rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had visualised this scenario. None had predicted such a situation for the party in this year's assembly elections.
The trends and results available till the afternoon suggest that the party will not even reach the victory total it achieved more than 20 years ago when it had begun to rise and make a mark in the electoral field.
The party, by 1993, had become a force to reckon with in the state assembly. It had bagged 67 seats that year which was the worst period for the party, as it did much better in elections after that. This year the party is unlikely to reach even the 1993 total.
The BSP had done much better in assembly elections after 1993. For instance it had won 98 seats in 2002. In the next election, it performed extremely well and formed a government on its own with 206 members in the House.
As this dismal performance has been made in the wake of routs in the Lok Sabha polls held three years ago, it should cause more worries to its leader Mayawati.
Looking back it appears that the party had risen steadily in the Lok Sabha elections from 1989 to 2009. Winning four seats in 1989 the party increased its tally to 21 in 2009.
Some re-thinking has to be made by the party in this light. A detailed analysis may be made after all the results are out but at present it appears that its new experiment of giving more seats to Muslims than Dalits has done more harm to it.. The success achieved by the BJP even in Dalit dominated areas only points towards this hard fact.
Clearly, the Dalits who were its traditional supporters did not like this change and switched over to the rival BJP.