Alliance With Mayawati Could Have Saved BJP In UP? BSP Secured More Votes Than Margin On 27 Seats Where NDA Is Trailing

The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) contested the Lok Sabha elections without joining hands with any of the two major alliances. However, the party has failed to register a lead in any constituency.

The decision to contest alone has not only harmed the prospects of BSP, making it almost irrelevant, but also the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the BSP got more votes than the margin of votes in many seats where BJP is trailing.

As per the official Election Commission trends at 3:30 pm, the Samajwadi Party (SP) is leading in 35 seats, BJP in 34 seats, Congress in seven and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in two seats.

On 27 seats, where the BJP and its allies are trailing, the margin of votes is less than the votes secured by the BSP. This means that, if the two parties had allied and managed a successful vote transfer, INDI Alliance's lead could have been reduced.

These seats are Aligarh, Ambedkar Nagar, Amroha, Ballia, Banda, Basti, Chandauli, Dhaurahra, Etah, Etawah, Faizabad, Fatehpur, Ghazipur, Ghosi, Jalaun, Jaunpur, Kheri, Lalganj, Machhlishahr, Muzaffarnagar, Pratapgarh, Robertsganj, Sambhal, Sant Kabir Nagar, Sultanpur, Sitapur and Saharanpur.

In 2019, the BSP and SP contested in alliance when the former won 10 seats and the latter five seats. However, the alliance was called off soon after the elections and since then Mayawati has been targeting SP and BJP both.