NEW DELHI, May 11: Results from the month-long multi-stage elections to Uttar Pradesh assembly gave a landmark victory to the Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Friday and left two mainstream groups that had used anti-Pakistan rhetoric to woo voters stranded by the wayside.

BSP leader Mayawati, a former chief minister, snatched a surprise tally of 206 seats in the 402-member assembly. The results, which embarrassed all major pollsters, ended more than two decades of coalition governments India’s most populous state which has given the country most of its prime ministers.

Outgoing Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party came second with 97 seats. Mr Yadav, a former defence minister, blamed the federal election commission for his defeat, saying the independent constitutional body had unfairly interfered with the elections. It appears, however, that the no-nonsense election body enabled by its stringent security arrangements a large number of Dalit voters to cast the ballot, unthinkable when upper caste landlords manage to have their way.

Ms Mayawati’s winning caste arithmetic included Brahmin and Muslim voters. This was the same combination that once worked for the Congress party, the difference being the Dalit hegemony of the BSP in the new coalition. The Congress had used Brahmin, Muslim and Dalit alliances too, but mostly under Brahmin leadership. In this sense the politics in Uttar Pradesh has come a full circle.

The country’s main opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was the biggest loser with 50 seats while the Congress fell three seats short of its tally in the 2002 polls when it won 25 seats.

Both the parties had sought to woo communal votes. The BJP began with an outrageous film it produced and distributed on CDs. It showed Pakistan as the source of mayhem and terrorism in India and Indian Muslims as bigots who tricked Hindu girls into marrying them. The CD was banned by the election commission following widespread protests. The BJP on Friday apologised for the CD.

The Congress’s pitch for the Hindu nationalist vote bank came in the form of a controversial assertion by its youth leader Rahul Gandhi, who claimed that his grandmother Indira Gandhi had broken Pakistan into two. Congress leaders expressed satisfaction that the verdict had ended the BJP’s recent winning streak.