DEHRADUN: Despite struggling to make inroads in Uttarakhand for the last 18 years —ever since the hill state was carved out of UP— neither the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) nor the Samajwadi Party (SP) have managed to make a mark in the Himalayan state. Will the situation be any different this year? In the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the BSP will contest from Haridwar, Nainital, Almora and Tehri, while the SP will field its candidate from Pauri, as per their seat-sharing arrangement.However, political observers say that the alliance is unlikely to make any dent in the vote share of the Congress and BJP. The main reason for this, according to analysts, is that people still have not forgotten about the infamous Rampur Tiraha shooting incident of 1994 and other such incidents which took place during the agitation for the formation of the separate state of Uttarakhand when the SP government was in power in Lucknow.“As far as the BSP is concerned, its core support base of Dalit voters is small in number in the hill state. Hence, the party’s chances in the upcoming polls look bleak,” poll analyst Jay Singh Rawat said.From 2002 to 2014, both parties have had limited number of success in Uttarakhand.In 2002, the BSP had won 7 out of 70 assembly seats and received only 10.93% of the total vote share. In 2007 assembly polls, the BSP won only 8 seats, out of which six were from Haridwar and two from Udham Singh Nagar district.However from 2012 onwards, the graph went down for the Mayawati-led party. In 2012 assembly polls, the BSP managed to win only three seats, whereas in 2017, the party didn’t manage to win even a single seat.For the SP, the 2004 Lok Sabha polls were the only notable achievement in which the party bagged the Haridwar constituency. Since then, the party has failed to win even a single seat in either the 2009 or 2014 general elections.“One can say that the BSP has had a stronghold in rural pockets of Haridwar district , but it has failed to capitalise on it and remained restricted to Haridwar and few parts of Udham Singh Nagar district,” poll analyst Rawat said.Two-time MLA Mohammad Shahzad, who was expelled from the BSP meanwhile said, “The reason behind the party’s downfall was the lack of communication with the senior leaders in Lucknow. The only communication is through the state chief and there is no other way out. In such a scenario, state chief becomes extremely powerful and there is no way that a party member can complain against him with the seniors in Lucknow.”

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