After blaming them for poll losses, BSP turns to Muslims again, sets up ‘Bhaichara’ panel

THREE years after it suspended the same following the 2022 Assembly election results in Uttar Pradesh reducing it to one seat, the BSP has decided to revive its outreach to Muslims. BSP chief Mayawati had blamed the minority community then, as well as after the 2024 Lok Sabha results, when it didn’t win a single seat in UP, for its poor performance.

Now, in another bid to bring together the Muslim and its traditional Dalit vote, ahead of the 2027 Assembly polls in UP, the BSP has revived its ‘Muslim Samaj Bhaichara Sangathan’.

On Wednesday, Mayawati will hold a meeting in Lucknow with the BSP’s ‘Mandal Sanyojaks’, appointed for the 18 divisions of the state to help revive the Muslim Sangathan. It will be her first such meeting after the 2022 polls with a focus on Muslim voters.

Muslims account for 19% of UP’s population. In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, the party had fielded 88 Muslim candidates. All of them lost, with the BSP winning just one seat and getting 12.88% of the votes. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BSP fielded the most number of Muslim candidates in the state (19), as well as across the country (37). Again, not one of them had won, with the BSP’s Muslim candidates finishing third in their seats in UP, leading Mayawati to lament at the community choosing the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance over it to defeat the BJP.

“The Muslim community has not been able to understand the BSP despite the party giving them adequate representation in the past several elections. In this situation, the party will think carefully before giving them an opportunity in future elections so that it does not suffer a terrible loss like this,” Mayawati said.

Holding the SP also responsible, she added that if the BSP had received even 50% of Muslim votes, the Hindus – especially Brahmins in the state “upset with the BJP” – would have supported her party and that would have been enough to defeat the BJP.

Senior BSP leader Bhim Rao Ambedkar said that the party will have a Scheduled Caste leader as convenor in every mandal-level Muslim bhaichara committee to try and bring the two groups together. “This exercise has been started in the last one week to develop bhaichara (brotherhood) of Muslims with SCs… The rest of the organisational structure will be decided by Behanji.”

BSP leader Mohd Sarvar Mailk, who lost the Lok Sabha elections from Lucknow in 2024 and is in-charge of the Muslim Sangathan committee for Lucknow, said Muslims again see the BSP as an option. “Muslims have understood that voting for the SP is meaningless. They are now going to support Behanji. We will reach out to the community with her ideas.”