Understanding Mayawati's decision to quit the Rajya Sabha in haste

Mayawati joining hands with the SP and Congress could give her a glimmer of hope to be back in the Rajya Sabha.

After storming out of the Rajya Sabha, BSP supremo, Mayawati resigned from the Upper House, a few months before her term was to come to an end. She said that she took the decision after she was told to cut short her impromptu speech on alleged atrocities on Dalits.

The question is whether this was a decision taken out of anger or was it a calculated move on her part? Her terms in the Rajya Sabha would have come to an end in April 2018. She also is well aware of the fact that she cannot be elected to the RS owing to poor numbers following a humiliating defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. She has 19 MLAs and that is not good enough to send her to the Rajya Sabha.

What are Mayawati's plans?

She did raise the Dalit issue before storming out of the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. It would be a politically calculated move on her part. The BJP has already called it a drama, but Mayawati does have bigger plans in mind.

A good possibility is that she will join hands with the Samajwadi Party and Congress in a bid to strengthen the joint opposition against Narendra Modi. The focus clearly is the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. There are clear indications that all parties would take on the BJP in the 2019 polls.

In order to have a significant number or to halt Modi, a big win in UP is important. There was a proposal to join hands with the Congress and SP ahead of the UP assembly polls. However that did not materialise and all parties paid the price for the same. Mayawati too realises that to stop the Modi juggernaut in 2019, it is necessary for her to join hands with arch rivals such as the SP and Congress.

A RS ticket:

Mayawati joining hands with the SP and Congress could give her a glimmer of hope to be back in the Rajya Sabha. With support of 47 MLAs of the SP and 7 from the Congress she could just scrape through and be back in the Upper House.

If these plans do not materialise, then Mayawati may look for outside support as well. However as of now there appears to be no such plan. The manner in which she resigned on Tuesday clearly indicates that no deal outside of UP was struck to get her back to the Rajya Sabha.

The more one tries to analyse her decision, the harder one finds it to understand. Many political experts feel that it was a decision taken in haste and Mayawati would repent at leisure.

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