BSP supremo Mayawati is known to make U-turns that are difficult to fathom. The difficulty is compounded because she never talks to the media, much less explain her baffling moves. Analysts are free to draw their own conclusions, of course, at their own peril. Her scathing attack on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other opposition politicians who attempted to visit Srinagar, demonstrated yet again that the opposition was a divided house on the government’s decisions on J&K. In a series of tweets, she accused the leaders of giving the Centre a chance to do politics on the subject, endorsing indirectly the Modi government’s decision to end special status to J&K. She said that Bhimrao Ambedkar had been a supporter of equality, unity and integrity of India and that is why he was not in favour of Article 370 for Jammu and Kashmir.
While that may appear to be the ostensible reason for her ‘support’ to the BJP, there are also those who say that Mayawati’s relations with the BJP and Narendra Modi go back a long way. In 1995, Maywati formed government in UP with the BJP support, which lasted for two months. Then again in 1997, she formed a government for a second time, again with BJP support. She had campaigned for Modi during the 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections, when the whole world seemed to be arraigned against the then Gujarat chief minister. The BSP had aligned with the BJP yet again in 2005, an alliance that this time lasted for two years. However, BJP insiders regretted the alliance as it allowed the Dalit leader to expand her electoral base and make inroads into the BJP’s vote bank. Since then, the BJP and BSP have been on separate sides of the political divide. Could Mayawati’s tantrums be a prelude to yet another twist and turn?
