But can Mayawati survive alone?

Wider tentacles:

Will she go alone?

NEW DELHI: BSP leader Mayawati on Tuesday announced her party will contest the upcoming 11 bypolls in Uttar Pradesh on its own . She did however add the break with the Samajwadi Party was 'not permanent' and said the alliance could be rekindled in the future. The bypolls in the state are necessitated by the election of 11 MLAs to the Lok Sabha in the recently concluded general elections.Shortly afterwards, Samajwadi chief Akhilesh Yadav also confirmed his party would contest the bypolls alone . "If the alliance ends, we will field SP candidates on all 11 seats up for bypolls after consulting party leaders soon," Yadav said.Probably. For one, the Lok Sabha elections are over and the Mahagathbandhan, the alliance of BSP and SP, along with other regional parties like the Ajit Singh-led RLD and several other smaller parties, fared miserably compared to their expectations in the Lok Sabha seats from UP — winning just 15 of the 78 seats it contested. In fact, while the BSP fared the best, winning 10 of the 38 seats it contested, its tally was far lower than Mayawati's expectation of 20 seats. That, she feels, was because the BSP only got votes from its traditional vote bank not the votes of the SP's voter base. Moreover, this time, unlike in the 2017 assembly elections, not only was her seat share higher than SP's, even her party's vote share was higher than the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP — 19.3% and 17.93% respectively.Unlike the SP and RLD, which are largely confined to Uttar Pradesh, the BSP's main voter base — Dalits and other backward communities — are spread in other states as well, such as in Punjab, which has the highest Dalit population in India and in Madhya Pradesh, where it won two seats in the 2018 assembly polls (SP also has a seat in the MP assembly).Mayawati, who was a member of the Rajya Sabha till she resigned in protest last year, is currently not a member of either house of the Parliament and will need the support of not just the SP and RLD but also probably the Congress if she wishes to re-enter as an MP — with 10 seats from UP up for grabs in 2020.