The performance of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the Uttar Pradesh bypolls threatens to relegate Mayawati’s party into irrelevance in a state where it was once a force to reckon with.

The BSP had contested all the nine Assembly seats where bypolls were held on Wednesday but failed to win any.

While Mayawati claims she is the sole representative of the Dalits, she was way behind the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) in two seats out of nine. Headed by Chandrashekhar, the ASP(K) cornered more votes in Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar) and Kundarki (Moradabad) than the BSP. Even Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) got more votes than the BSPin these seats.

The BSP candidates forfeited their election deposits in the Karhal (Mainpuri), Kundarki, Meerapur and Sishamau constituencies for failing to secure one-sixth of the total valid votes polled.

In Kundarki, BSP nominee Rafat Ullah got only 1,099 votes this time against 42,742 in the Assembly elections in 2022. The ASP(K), which got 977 votes in 2022, polled 14,201 votes this time.

Only 3,248 people voted for the BSP’s Shah Nazar in Meerapur where Zahid Hussain of the ASP(K) and Mohammad Arshad of the AIMIM bagged 22,661 and 18,869 votes, respectively. The ASP(K) had got only 1,628 votes in 2022 and the AIMIM did not field its candidate then.

This time, however, the Muslim votes got divided among the SP, ASP(K) and the AIMIM in Meerapur, resulting in the victory of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidate Mithilesh Pal by a margin of over 30,000 votes. The RLD is a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. The SP’s Sumbul Rana got 53,508 votes against Pal’s 84,304 votes in Meerapur, which has over 45 per cent Muslim voters.

The same phenomenon did not apply to Kundarki, which is home to over 50 per cent Muslim voters. Ramveer Singh of the BJP won the seat with a victory margin of over 1.40 lakh votes. The SP’s MohammadRizwan, the nearest BJP rival, got only25,580 votes. SP president Akhilesh Yadav has alleged that Muslim voters were “terrorised and forced not to cast their votes”.

The BSP was never strong in Sishamau and Karhal where Virendra Kumar and Awanish Kumar fetched 1,410 and 8,409 votes, respectively. In 2022, the party had got 2,937 votes in Sishamau and 15,701 votes in Karhal.

In Ghaziabad, Parmanand Garg of Mayawati’s party could manage only 10,736 votes compared with 32,691 votes that BSP candidate Krishan Kumar had polled in 2022.

The party also witnessed a decline in Khair (Aligarh), Phulpur (Allahabad), Majhwan (Mirzapur) and Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar). It got 13,365 votes (against 65,302 in 2022) in Khair, 20,342 (33,036) in Phulpur, 34,927 (52,990) in Majhwan and 41,647 (58,482) in Katehari.

Mayawati dubbed the result as “unexpected” and claimed that people had become suspicious of the electronic voting machines (EVMs).

“The people believe that something is wrong with the EVMs. I appeal to the innocent people not to fall into the trap of the casteist and the communal parties and support only the BSP in future because only we can protect their rights,” she said.