Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is an Indian political party founded by Kanshi Ram on 14 April 1984, the birth anniversary of B. R. Ambedkar. It seeks to organise the Bahujans: Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and backward classes. It grew out of Kanshi Ram’s earlier bodies, an employees’ association begun in 1971 that became BAMCEF in 1978, and the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti (DS4), formed in 1981.

Its link to the Panth is its founder. Kanshi Ram was born in 1934 near Ropar in Punjab into a family of the Ramdasia Sikh tradition, and Wikipedia quotes him as saying Sikh teaching was “more egalitarian.”

Its leaders, in order

• Kanshi Ram, founder. He named Mayawati his successor in 2001 and handed her the party in 2003. In 2002 he announced that he would take Buddhism on 14 October 2006, the 50th anniversary of Ambedkar’s conversion; he died in Delhi on 9 October 2006.
• Mayawati, listed as president. She has been Uttar Pradesh chief minister four times: June to October 1995, March to September 1997, May 2002 to August 2003, and May 2007 to March 2012.

Its part in Punjab

• February 1992: the BSP won nine seats in the Assembly election that Kharku groups called on voters to boycott and that most Akali Dal leaders stayed out of. Turnout was 21.6 per cent, Congress won 87 seats and the BSP became the main opposition (The Tribune). Wikipedia puts its vote share at 16.32 per cent, its best in Punjab.
• May 1996: the BSP won three of Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats, and Kanshi Ram was elected from Hoshiarpur, a seat reserved for Scheduled Castes.
• 2022: it contested 20 Assembly seats in alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal and won one, with 1.77 per cent of the vote.

Where it stands today

The BSP holds no seat in the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. Of the three state assembly seats it holds in the country, one is in Punjab (Wikipedia). The Bahujan Dravida Party, a small party of Tamil Sikhs, follows Kanshi Ram’s politics and fought Hoshiarpur in 2024; it has its own page.