Bahujan Samaj Party president and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, attacked the Aam Aadmi Party and its chief Arvind Kejriwal, accusing them of influencing elections through freebies.
The BSP chief also indicated that her party would contest the Gujarat Assembly polls on its own.
Mayawati attacked the Delhi chief minister during a special meeting with the office-bearers of her party to discuss the political situation in Gujarat at BSP office in Lucknow on Thursday. BSP senior office-bearers and coordinators in Gujarat participated in the meeting. In the meeting, she discussed in depth the election preparations of the party for the upcoming elections in Gujarat.
While asking the BSP workers and leaders to contest the elections on the strength of the party with promptness and commitment, Mayawati took a dig at the AAP contesting elections in Gujarat this time. She said that Kejriwal was offering freebies to the people there. “You need to be careful with them,” she told the party leaders.
Mayawati talked about freeing Dalits and other neglected sections from injustice, exploitation, land eviction, poisonous liquor etc. Reviewing the progress report of election preparations in Gujarat prepared by the office-bearers, Mayawati said the poor, the Dalits and other neglected people of Gujarat had been waiting for a long time for proper social, political and economic justice and change, first under the Congress and now under the Bharatiya Janata Party rules. “This is very sad and unfortunate,” she said and added, “This can only be changed by a better election result now.”
Mayawati said that people of these classes were eagerly waiting for their “achhe din’ like UP, Haryana, Himachal and other states of the country. She said that `achhe din’ could be only ensured by giving power to BSP and asked the leaders to convince this fact to the people of Gujarat so that they voted for the party and ensure the formation of its government there for the first time.
Mayawati said that this time AAP was also playing its own trick in Gujarat with promises of distribution of ‘revadi’ and other kinds of allurement, but the real interest of the people, especially the poor, downtrodden and marginalised sections, was not looked at. She said that these sections were not getting any good in BJP ruled states including UP, nor in AAP ruled Delhi state.