The Bahujan Samaj Party will not contest the bypoll for the Rampur parliamentary seat and also not support any party on this seat. The party, however, will fight for the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat in the bypoll.
BSP chief Mayawati declared Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali as the party candidate for the by-election to Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat.
By-elections for the Rampur and Azamgarh parliamentary seats will be held on June 23. The bypolls have been necessitated after the resignations of Mohammad Azam Khan and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav from Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats respectively after they won the UP assembly polls.
In a statement issued after a two-day party review meeting in Lucknow, the BSP said, "The party will not contest the Lok Sabha by-elections scheduled on June 23 from the Rampur seat as we have to work on this seat to make the organisation strong there. The party will also not support anyone on this seat. The party has already decided to contest the Azamgarh parliamentary seat.”
The party asserted that it is "capable" of shaking the roots of the "anti-poor" and "pro-capitalists" Bharatiya Janata Party in the state. At the meeting, Mayawati said the BSP was a party with limited resources and it was fighting parties that were run with the support of capitalists so "we have to make the party strong by holding small cadre-based meetings".
"We did not get expected results in the assembly polls even after hard work," she said, and added, "New political development will give a new lease of life to the party and for this attempts are on."
"After uprooting the Congress from the state, the BSP is the only party that can do the same for the BJP," she added.
An atmosphere of atrocities on the poor and anarchy is seen in the BJP rule but people cannot muster the courage to speak against them, she charged.
"Poor and unemployed are targeted in the name of anti-encroachment drives and they are made targets with the terror of bulldozer. The right use of bulldozers is for making roads and construction works but it has been put for destruction works," she said.
At the meeting, Mayawati advised party workers to hold cadre meetings on the issues of employment and basic problems of people.
She alleged that to divert the attention of people, religious issues and disputes were being raised in the state.
Mayawati also said that due to lack of upkeep, memorials and parks constructed during her regime in Lucknow were in a bad shape and an adequate budget was not being allocated for them.
The BSP has already started preparations for the civic elections to be held in the state this year. For this the party has prepared a strategy and under which the party will add new members.
The BSP supremo directed the zonal in-charges and district presidents to run the membership drive expeditiously. A target has been given to make 75,000 members in each assembly constituency.
The party has decided to hold elections of 1,000 members in municipal corporations, 500 in palika parishads and 300 in nagar panchayats.
Mayawati held a meeting with 36 in-charges of 18 divisions of the state including state president Bhim Rajbhar, state in-charge Munkad Ali, Vijay Pratap Gautam and Rajkumar Gautam. She first discussed the expansion of the organisation in each circle.
Generally, the BSP used to stay away from civic elections. But in 2017, the party contested the civic polls for the first time and won two municipal corporations in the state. The BJP had won 15 of the 17 municipal corporations in the state.
