In most parties there is a political leadership structure. There is a ladder which you climb in the party hierarchy. In the Bahujan Samaj Party there is Mayawati on top and then, there are some functional people. You find Satish Mishra, Nasimuddin Siddiqui and Baburam Kushwaha but they are not leaders fitted somewhere in the hierarchy. You can't say that this particular BSP leader is moving up, this particular MLA will become MP one day. There is absolutely nothing like that.

All the decisions are taken by Mayawati. There is no middle level leadership yet there is that elaborate grassroots mechanism to win elections. The BSP does have a real elaborate grassroots mechanism that works like a well-oiled machinery.

We saw how well it worked in the last assembly election in Uttar Pradesh. It is not the case of some autocrat leader and nothing else. There is a huge mechanism on the ground but no middle level leadership. There is no realm for other leaders in the political space within the party.

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The BSP has made fantastic progress and Mayawati has had a meteoric rise without participating in any kind of agitation. The Congress came up through the freedom movement, the Jan Sangh carried out many agitations, the movement of the Rath Yatra and the saffron wave helped the BJP.

The Socialists and Communists have participated in many agitations, but the BSP has hardly carried out any agitations. Its energies have been totally concentrated in mobilising internally and then winning elections. For a moment, don't look at the negative or positive but the fact is, it succeeded.

A party without lineage should have failed. A party without a middle level leadership should have failed. A party without history of agitation should have failed, yet the BSP succeeded.

Image: Mayawati addresses an election rally at Sant Kabirnagar, Uttar Pradesh, this week. Photographs: PTI Photo

Also read: The road to Delhi is now clear: Mayawati

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