Party sources fear that a weakened Samajwadi Party would hand the advantage to Mayawati and her Bahujan Samaj Party, making a prospective two-way fight between the BJP and the BSP "far tougher" than a multi-cornered contest.
"It's bad news for us," a BJP official admitted.
For the BJP, the "advantage" of a four-way fight that also features the Congress is that Muslim votes would get "badly" split while those of most Hindus might go to it, as they did in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP believes that if the Samajwadi patriarch does not resolve his family issues, the Muslims, who a source claimed "appeared to be undecided right now", could "migrate en masse" to the BSP.
"Our feedback is that the Muslims have not made up their minds. They are watching the Samajwadi and the BSP closely. But if they think the Samajwadi is collapsing from infighting, the BSP would be their next destination. Muslims know that Mayawati has a critical mass of support from the Dalits and some of the most backward castes, so they will not waste their votes if they root for her. She has a good chance of defeating the BJP," a BJP official said.
The BJP's assessment is that any Muslim accretion to Mayawati's vote base could serve as a magnet to pull in some upper caste votes as well. "So far, the upper castes seem solidly with us. But the upper caste votes are slippery. If they see Mayawati as the potential winner, they could desert us," a source said.
Mayawati has so far focused on consolidating her Dalit base and pulling in the Muslims. Unlike in 2007, when she was elected with a majority on the back of Dalit, upper caste, backward caste and Muslim votes, Mayawati has not reached out to the Brahmins, Thakurs and Banias yet.
A BSP source said in the coming weeks, Rajya Sabha MP and Mayawati's political adviser Satish C. Mishra and his team of Brahmins would travel all over Uttar Pradesh as part of a specific outreach to the upper castes. Mishra, a lawyer, had crafted Mayawati's Brahmin cooption tactic in 2007.