The mercurial BSP president Mayawati’s admission on Thursday of her cordial relations with the Congress has once again set off speculation of an impending BSP-Congress alliance for elections in states. While Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s valiant call to Mayawati for an electoral alliance before the Lok Sabha polls fell on deaf ears, the Congress seems determined and has neither given up hope nor efforts to woo the Dalit Queen.

While Mayawati has already extended outside support to the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre, on the cards are Assembly polls in Maharashtra, scheduled for around October this year.

The Congress, which has an alliance with Sharad Pawar’s NCP in Maharashtra the coalition also rules the state, has found it imperative to woo Mayawati if it has to retain and gain seats in the coming election. The BSP’s crucial role in Maharashtra became evident in the just-concluded Lok Sabha election where a complacent Congress-NCP coalition was pushed behind its main rival, the BJP-Shiv Sena, because of the BSP’s new-found influence in Vidarbha and Marathwada.

The ruling coalition, which was all set to sweep the state, found to its horror being relegated to the second place, with 23 seats Congress 13, NCP 9, RPI-A 1 as compared to the Shiv Sena’s 12 and BJP’s 13. The alliance is believed to have lost 10 of the 11 seats in its bastion of Vidarbha, and almost all the eight seats in Marathwada due to none other than the BSP, which ate into the Congress-NCP votes to help its rivals win in the region.

The BSP came third in almost all the constituencies of Marathwada and Vidarbha, increasing its vote share from a meagre 0.32 per cent in the last Lok Sabha election in 1999 to a high of 6 per cent in this election. The primary reason for the BSP’s rapid growth has been the disintegration of Prakash Ambedkar’s Republican Party of India, the original Dalit political party in the state. The RPI has splintered into 14 factions, thus leaving the people no other choice but to go to another umbrella Dalit group.

The NCP’s Praful Patel—now Union Civil Aviation Minister—was defeated in Bhandara by 3,000 votes by his BJP rival. The BSP, which came third, had walked away with 9,000 votes. In Wardha, the BJP’s Suresh Ganpat defeated the Congress’s Prabhatai Rau by a margin of only 3,000 votes. The BSP’s Somraj Telkhede came third but took away 30,000 votes.

Similarly, in Yavatmal, Akola, Amravati, Buldhana, Chandrapur, Chimur and Ramtek, the other Vidarbha constituencies, the BJP-Shiv Sena combine defeated the Congress-NCP alliance, with the BSP coming third or a close fourth. It was only in Nagpur that Congress candidate Vilas Muttemwar defeated the BJP’s Atal Bahadur Singh. The margin was so large—the Congress polled 47.09 per cent votes and the BJP only 34.66 per cent—that the BSP’s vote share of 7.29 per cent could not do much damage.

However, in constituencies like Chandrapur, the Congress’s Naresh Puglia lost to the BJP’s Hansraj Gangaram by 60,000 votes, but the BSP’s Rajendra Vaidya, who came third, walked away with around one lakh votes.

Similarly, in Marathwada, the Congress-NCP alliance won only two of the eight constituencies, and in all eight, the BSP came third or a close fourth. Take the constituency of Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil of Latur. Patil lost to the BJP by 30,000 votes, and though the BSP came third with 13,000 votes, it could have played a more positive role if it was on the Congress-NCP side. In Beed, the NCP narrowly won the seat defeating the BJP by 6 per cent votes. The BSP came fourth, but together with the Independent who came third, it got a crucial 4.75 per cent of votes.

In Osmanabad, the Shiv Sena romped home because the BSP took away a crucial 10,000 votes, defeating the Congress candidate. The difference between the Shiv Sena and Congress was around 10,000 votes. The Congress-NCP finally won only Hingoli and Beed in Marathwada.

It is not only the Congress that is wooing the BSP but also NCP chieftain and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who has enjoyed excellent relations with BSP founder and Mayawati’s mentor Kanshi Ram.