Fashioning a bold new social engineering by roping in Brahmins in a multi-hued coalition, Mayawati on Friday stormed back to power in Uttar Pradesh clinching a simple majority on her own ending 14 years of coalition politics in the state.
The 51-year-old Dalit leader, who unseated her bitter rival Mulayam Singh Yadav and delivered a body blow to Bharatiya Janata Party's hopes of building on its string of victories in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Mumbai corporation, will assume reins of power for the fourth time.
The BSP, which always campaigned on an anti-upper caste plank in its two decades of electoral politics, fought the polls this time without any allies and won 206 seats of the 402 seats for which results were declared.
The party had secured 99 seats in 2002 elections.
This gives BSP a comfortable figure above the half-way mark in a House of 403. Election for one seat was countermanded.
Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who won from both Gunnaur and Bharthana, conceded defeat in the wake of his party's drubbing and resigned in the afternoon. His Samajwadi Party suffered severe losses, winning 97 seats, coming down drastically from 143 in 2002.
Consolidating on her traditional base among Dalits, Mayawati gave tickets to 138 upper caste candidates, including 86 Brahmins, and a large number of Muslims and OBCs, besides 93 Dalits.
The verdict that rediff predicted
Bharatiya Janata Party + allies 51 (BJP-50, Janata Dal-United-01), Congress+allies 22 (Cong-22), Others + Independents 26 (Rashtiya Lok Dal-10, Rashtriya Parivartan Dal-02, Bharatiya Jan Shakti-01, Jan Morcha-01, UP United Democratic Front-01, Independents-11.)
