Mayawati, Kanshi Ram’s political heir and UP’s first Dalit CM

When Mayawati took the oath of office as the Uttar Pradesh chief minister for the first time on June 3, 1995, it marked several firsts: the 39-year-old Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader became UP’s first Dalit CM and India’s first woman Dalit CM, even as she also became the youngest CM in UP’s electoral history till then.

The BSP’s alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) for the 1993 UP Assembly polls led to a situation after one-and-half years that resulted in Mayawati being sworn in as UP’s 17th CM.

Mayawati, who was born on January 15, 1956, in a Gautam Buddh Nagar village, completed her law degree from Delhi University. She started her career as a teacher in Delhi. After meeting Kanshi Ram, she became an active member of his organisation, the BAMCEF (All-India Backward Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Minority Communities Employees Federation) since its inception in 1977.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. (Express archive photo)

When Kanshi Ram founded the BSP on April 14, 1984, she got deeply associated with it and became the party president on September 18, 2003, when he could no longer continue in his post owing to his health problems.

In 1987 Mayawati contested from the Hardwar parliamentary constituency (now in Uttarakhand) on the BSP ticket, but lost. In the 1989 Lok Sabha polls, she won Bijnore seat, defeating a Janata Dal candidate. In the 1991 Lok Sabha polls, she contested from Bijnore, Bulandshahar and Hardwar, but lost from all the three seats.

Mayawati took over the reins of the UP government for the first time in 1995 under dramatic circumstances. The relations between the two coalition government partners, the SP and the BSP, were becoming increasingly tense and bitter. The SP chief and CM, Mulayam Singh Yadav, then convened a meeting of his party leaders and asked them to get ready for fresh polls.

BSP leader Kanshi Ram and Mayawati. (Express archive photo)

Then the “guest house incident” occurred. After pulling out from their coalition government, BSP head Kanshi Ram and party general secretary Mayawati held a meeting of their legislators at Lucknow’s “VVIP Guest House” on June 2, 1995. SP activists allegedly barged into the guest house and assaulted the BSP legislators, forcing its senior leaders, including Mayawati, to take refuge in a “suite reserved for her in the guest house”.

Read more from the Express Series ‘The Uttar Pradesh CMs’

Seizing on this crisis, the leaders of the Opposition BJP met governor Motilal Vora, urging him to dismiss the Mulayam government. Vora asked Mulayam to resign and when he refused to do so, his government was dismissed. When Mayawati went to the Raj Bhawan, Vora showed her a letter from the BJP, which stated that if she forms the government it will give support from outside. Thus, Mayawati took her oath as the CM on June 3, 1995. She could however continue only till October 18, 1995, when the BJP withdrew its support.

Despite the fall of its government, the BSP was expanding its base in UP, riding on growing aspirations of Dalits and other deprived sections of society. The 1996 Assembly elections threw up a hung verdict, in which the BJP got 174 seats as against the SP’s 110 and the BSP’s 67 seats in the 425-member House. After a short spell of President’s rule, the BJP and the BSP again joined hands to form a government under an agreement that the CM’s post will rotate between the two partners after every six months. This led to Mayawati, who won from Badaun’s Bilsi seat, taking oath as the CM for the second time on March 21, 1997. She resigned on September 21, 1997 as per the terms of the agreement. But when the BJP’s Kalyan Singh took over as the CM, the BSP withdrew its support to the government.

The 2002 polls again saw a hung Assembly, with the incumbent BJP getting 88 seats, the BSP 98 and the SP 143. She contested from Bulandshahar’s Harora and Ambedkar Nagar’s Jahangirganj (now renamed as Alapur) and won from both seats. After another spell of President’s rule, the BJP and the BSP again forged an alliance, with Mayawati sworn in as the CM for the third time on May 3, 2002.

But, soon afterwards, she faced a backlash from a group of BJP MLAs after her government booked an Independent MLA Raguraj Pratap Singh (Raja Bhaiya) under the then Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), which was passed by the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. Amid the mounting pressure from the BJP, Mayawati stepped down as the CM on August 29, 2003.

Bahujan Samaj Party Supremo Mayawati and Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav at an election campaign rally. (Express file photo by Vishal Srivastav)

Mayawati’s repeated chief ministerial stints, regardless of their durations, played a remarkable role in ensuring social and political empowerment of the Dalit community, which had never seen their representation at such a top executive level in the state ever earlier.

Ahead of the 2007 Assembly polls, realising that the three principal political players have peaked to a virtually similar level, Mayawati tried to expand her party’s support base through “social engineering”. She inducted Satish Mishra into the BSP and started an outreach to the Brahmin community through him. A senior advocate, Mishra was then defending her in various corruption cases.

Her strategy to broadbase her party from “Bahu Jan” to “Sarva Jan” worked as reflected by the 2007 polls, in which the BSP got a simple majority on its own, winning 206 seats out of the total 403 while the BJP and the SP were reduced to 51 and 97, respectively. She completed her full five-year tenure this time from May 13, 2007 to March 15, 2012, thereby becoming the first UP CM to do so till then since 1952 when the first UP Assembly polls were held.

Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao chats with Mayawati. K. Karunakaran also seen in the picture. (Express archive photo)

However, in subsequent years, her many party leaders and close associates left the BSP.

Mayawati’s four stints as the CM together amounted to about seven years. She has also been elected to the Rajya Sabha thrice, the Lok Sabha four times, and to the UP Legislative Council twice.

In the 2012 Assembly polls, which saw a wave in favour of the SP, the BSP won 80 seats, while it plunged to just 19 seats in the 2017 polls amid a BJP wave. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, she forged an alliance with the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP to take on the BJP, but it could not stop the saffron party’s juggernaut.