New Delhi: After being outrightly rejected by the people again, Mayawati has once again blamed Muslims for her loss, arguing that despite fielding a large number of candidates from the minority community its voters failed to back her Bahujan Samaj Party.Going solo proved to be disastrous for Mayawati as the BSP not only failed to open its score but could only manage to secure around 9.4% votes in Uttar Pradesh where Dalits make up 21.5% of the population. This was even worse than its performance in 2014, when although the BSP could not convert any seats, it mustered a decent vote share of 19.77% and was runner-up on 34 seats out of the 80.On June 5, Mayawati, in a statement warned Muslims that she would field them in future only after “a lot of thought” to avoid a “terrible loss” like this. She also claimed that most voters of her Jatav community, UP’s largest Dalit caste, still backed the BSP.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyMayawati’s disingenuous call to fault Muslims for their political adeptness reeks of a disgruntled leader who failed to make any impact on the election. But she does have the right to feel upset, as despite deploying all dubious tactics and tacitly backing the incumbent, the BSP failed to play the role of a spoiler for the Opposition parties.The results also demonstrated that the BSP was not indispensable to the Opposition, further reducing Mayawati’s bargaining chip.Assuming that Mayawati is correct in assessing that most of her 9.4% vote share came from Jatavs (which is difficult to ascertain), her move to field 20 Muslims, as against the six by the INDIA bloc, proved inadequate to divide or distract the Muslim community to the BJP’s advantage.As per an analysis by The Wire, there were 47 Lok Sabha seats in UP, where the BSP’s vote share was more than the victory margin of either the SP or the BJP. Of these 47, 31 were won by the INDIA alliance.This means that the Opposition benefitted more from the BSP deciding to contest alone. There were 16 seats that the BJP won where its victory margin was less than the BSP’s votes. On 33 seats in UP, the BSP’s vote was irrelevant as it did not impact the final outcome whatsoever.An important question on everyone’s mind this election was, which way would the Dalit vote, in particular Jatavs, swing now that there was no grand alliance of the SP and BSP? In 2019 and 2022, the SP believed that on many constituencies, Dalit voters of the BSP were strategically made to shift to the BJP to ensure that the SP did not get the advantage. In this election, with Akhilesh Yadav running a high-pitched campaign to safeguard the constitutional rights of marginalised Hindu castes, and Mayawati staying out, a large section of Dalits might have picked the INDIA bloc. The BSP’s vote share shrunk from 13% in 2022 to 9.4% in 2024.A closer look at the results explains why Mayawati is resentful towards Muslims. None of the 20 Muslims she fielded could come close to even being the runner-up on any seat. In fact, barring Amroha, which the BJP won after defeating the sitting Muslim MP of the Congress, Kunwar Danish Ali, the BSP’s Muslim candidates did not hurt the INDIA bloc on any seat.On the contrary, on nine seats, the INDIA bloc candidate managed to defeat the BJP even when the victory margin was less than the votes polled by the Muslim candidate of the BSP. In simple words, the BSP’s Muslim candidates could not spoil the game for the Opposition, if that was the intent of the party to make its presence felt.These nine seats were Saharanpur, Aonla, Azamgarh, Budaun, Firozabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Sambhal and Etah.That Mayawati fielded Muslims on these seats, many of which the Opposition looked strong to win from day one, also compels us to question her intentions, which seemed focused on damaging the SP.Also read: Mayawati and the Curious Case of the Muslim VoteIn Azamgarh, Budaun and Firozabad, Akhilesh Yadav’s cousins Dharmendra Yadav, Aditya Yadav and Akshay Yadav won, respectively. In Saharanpur, a seat with a substantial Muslim population, Imran Masood of the Congress was the winner. Ambedkar Nagar was won by senior Kurmi leader Lalji Verma, while in Sambhal, the SP’s Muslim candidate Zia-ur-Rehman Barq retained the seat for the party. What’s notable is that while no Muslim candidate has even won Aonla or Ambedkar Nagar, the last time someone from the community won in Etah was in 1984.The BSP’s hopes of damaging the Opposition were further dashed in key constituencies Basti, Fatehpur and Salempur, where it fielded candidates mirroring the caste of the SP’s candidates. The BSP fielded Kurmis in Fatehpur and Basti against senior Kurmi leaders of the SP, Naresh Uttam Patel and Ram Prasad Chaudhary, respectively, but couldn’t cut enough votes to ensure their defeat. Similarly, in Salempur where the BSP fielded a Rajbhar, the SP’s Rajbhar candidate crossed the finish line.The BSP’s strategy of fielding Yadavs, the SP’s core vote base, in Jaunpur, Ballia and Sitapur also did not prevent the BJP from losing. In Jaunpur, the BSP had changed its Thakur candidate and replaced him with a Yadav under dubious circumstances, in a move that would have potentially made life easier for the BJP’s Thakur nominee Kripa Shankar Singh. However, he lost, and the SP’s Babu Singh Kushwaha, a senior OBC leader, came through by almost 1 lakh votes.The BSP could have potentially impacted the result either way on seven other seats, including Meerut, Amroha, Farrukhabad and Aligarh, had it got more votes.The SP’s Dalit candidate lost Meerut by just 10,585 votes while the BSP’s Tyagi candidate got 87,025 votes. In Bansgaon, the Congress lost by 5,130 votes to BJP even as the BSP polled 64,750. In Phulpur BJP won by 4,332 votes while BSP polled 82,586. SP lost Aligarh by 15,647 votes while the BSP polled 1,23,923 votes. In Farrukhabad, SP lost by 2,678 while the BSP polled 45,390. Congress lost Amroha by 28,670 while the BSP polled 164,099. BJP lost Dhaurahra by 4,449 votes while BSP polled 1,85,474. BJP lost Hamirpur by 2,629 while BSP polled 94,696. BJP lost Salempur by 3,573 while BSP polled 80,599.This was not the first time that Mayawati tried to make scapegoats out of Muslims for her own failures. In 2022, when she was reduced to a single MLA seat in UP, she came up with a contorted theory that because Hindus saw Muslims voting for the SP in a one-sided manner, they, despite being unhappy with the BJP government, polarised behind the saffron party to prevent the return of “goondas” and “corrupt mafia” rule under the SP.Seats where the BSP’s votes were more than the victory margin:Won by BJP: Akbarpur Aligarh, Amroha, Bansgaon, Bhadohi, Bijnor, Deoria, Farrukhabad, Fatehpur Sikri, Hardoi, Meerut, Mirzapur, Misrikh, Phulpur, Shahjahanpur, and Unnao.Won by INDIA bloc: Ambedkar Nagar, Aonla, Azamgarh, Ballia, Budaun, Banda, Basti, Chandauli, Dhaurahra, Etah, Etawah, Fatehpur, Firozabad, Ghazipur, Ghosi, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Jaunpur, Kairana, Kheri, Lalganj, Machhlishahr, Mohanlalganj, Muzaffarnagar, Pratapgarh, Saharanpur, Salempur, Sambhal, Sant Kabir Nagar, Sitapur, and Sultanpur.