Apart from the phase-2 of Bihar election, the country witnessed polls for Rajya Sabha seats held on Monday, November 2 and 56 other assembly seats across 11 states in the country on Tuesday, November 3.

In this background, BJP had won 9 out of 11 Rajya Sabha seats. In subsequent developments, BJP however let go of a Rajya Sabha seat to give it to Ramji Lal Gautam, Bahujan Samaj Party’s national coordinator.

BJP made this carefully planned move to not be called an ‘anti-Dalit’ party and be reflected as a Dalit supporter. It has been regarded as a potential move to woo the voters who form the support base of BSP in their favour. It comes at the point when in the state of UP, a lot of furor was generated as the fallout of the mishandling of the Hathras gangrape case involving a dalit girl. This strategic plan of BJP has already shown the beginning of results as the BSP chief, Mayawati recently declared that BJP will not be targeted as the opposition in any of the future assembly polls. Her party had earlier emphasized that BJP is their ideological opposition, and Mayawati had asserted that she would rather take sanyaas rather than join BJP. But, after BJP sacrificed its Rajya Sabha seat for BSP member, the BSP-Chief has decided not to consider BJP as the potential opposition but the Samajwadi Party as its main opposition party.

Soon after the Rajya Sabha poll results were announced, Mayawati made a statement that her party will be voting in favour of BJP to defeat the candidates of SP. In the Rajya Sabha polls, one member of BSP, Gautam had been elected unopposed along with 9 other members in Uttar Pradesh.  The unopposed elected member Gautam’s selection was quite unexpected as it had the support of just 9 MLAs. On the other hand, BJP that did not contest for any candidate already had 22 votes in favour and could have easily won the seat. However, this move of giving away the RS seat gained a lot of support from some members of  BSP and some other Dalit supporting parties and people.

The author is a student member of Amity Centre of Happiness.