Mayawati cuts ties with Gondwana party after MP, Chhattisgarh fiasco, to go solo in LS polls

Months after its bid to ally with the Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) for the November 2023 Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh came a cropper, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has broken up with the GGP, deciding to go solo in both the states in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Recently, the BSP also snapped its alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab.

The BSP leaders justified the party’s move to cut its ties with the GGP, saying their alliance did not work and that the GGP failed to transfer its tribal votes to the BSP candidates in the two states.

The GGP has rejected these claims. It was founded in 1991 to represent the Gond people and champion the demand for a separate Gondwana state.

The BSP had tied up with the GGP in MP and Chhattisgarh to undertake a “new social engineering”, looking to bring about an “alignment of Dalit and tribal voters” ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

The BSP had hoped if its “alliance experiment” with the GGP worked in the two state polls, it would benefit the party in the tribal-inhabited districts of Uttar Pradesh, too, both in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.

“But the BSP made no gain from this alliance in the Assembly polls. The BSP could not win any seat in both the states and the party’s vote share too came down,” said Ramakant Pippal, the MP BSP president. “The GGP could not transfer its votes to BSP candidates. Also, the GGP did not follow the gathbandhan spirit and fielded a candidate in the Jabera seat where the BSP was contesting. But the BSP voters supported the GGP candidates. So the BSP has decided to not continue with the alliance and contest all Lok Sabha seats alone.”

As per the seat-sharing arrangement for the elections to the