Three years after suspending it following the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election results that left the party with just one seat, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has revived its Muslim Samaj Bhaichara Sangathan, a move seen as an attempt to rebuild its traditional Dalit-Muslim alliance ahead of the 2027 Assembly polls.
On Wednesday, BSP president Mayawati will hold a meeting in Lucknow with the party’s Mandal Sanyojaks (coordinators) appointed for the 18 divisions of Uttar Pradesh to help reorganise the Muslim Sangathan.
This will be her first such meeting since the 2022 elections, with a particular focus on Muslim voters.
According to senior BSP leader Bhim Rao Ambedkar, each mandal-level Muslim bhaichara committee will have a Scheduled Caste leader as convenor, an attempt to strengthen ties between the Dalit and Muslim communities, according to Indian Express report.
In addition, Mayawati will convene a meeting of the party’s OBC Bhaichara committees on November 1.
This will be the fifth such meeting, as she has already chaired four similar reviews.
The OBC committees, formed in March across all districts, have been submitting monthly performance reports to state-level BSP functionaries.
The revival of the Muslim Sangathan also comes after Mayawati had blamed the minority community for the BSP’s poor electoral performance, both after the 2022 Assembly elections and again following the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, in which the party failed to win a single seat in Uttar Pradesh.
“The Muslim community has not been able to understand the BSP despite the party giving them adequate representation in past elections. In this situation, the party will think carefully before giving them opportunities in future elections so that it does not suffer terrible losses like this,” Mayawati had earlier said.
She added that if the BSP had received even half of the Muslim votes, Hindus, especially Brahmins disillusioned with the BJP, would have backed her party, which could have been enough to defeat the ruling party.
In the 2022 Assembly elections, the BSP fielded 88 Muslim candidates, all of whom lost, securing only one seat overall with 12.88% of the total vote share. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BSP fielded the highest number of Muslim candidates in the country: 19 from Uttar Pradesh and 37 nationwide. None of them won, with most finishing third in their respective constituencies.
A party insider told The Times of India that Mayawati might also discuss forming similar bhaichara committees for Muslims and upper castes in the upcoming meeting.
“The way the recent rally drew crowds from every caste and community, these options may be discussed,” the insider said.
Meanwhile Mayawati on Tuesday strongly condemned a hateful remark by former BJP MLA Raghavendra Pratap Singh about Muslim women and urged the government to take legal action against those responsible.
In a post on X, Mayawati described the Islamophobic and hateful remark, widely reported as “bring Muslim girls, get a job”, as “despicable” and “narrow-minded.”
She warned that statements and actions framed as opposition to religious conversion or so-called “love jihad”, and the vigilante measures that sometimes follow, are fostering communal and caste-based hatred, unrest and threats to people’s lives, property, and faith across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and other states.
“These criminal, anarchic and anti-social elements are an open challenge and danger to a civilized and constitutional government,” Mayawati wrote.
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