BSP chief asks party cadre to get ready to fight all 11 Assembly bypolls in UP
Upset at the drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls with the non-transfer of the Samajwadi Party votes in favour of her party candidates contesting under the banner of the grand alliance in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati hinted at going it alone in the future.
During a review meeting of the UP unit in New Delhi on Monday, Mayawati asked party office bearers, MLAs and newly-elected MPs to get ready claiming that the BSP would fight all 11 Assembly bypolls in Uttar Pradesh.
Bypolls to these Assembly seats are due as nine BJP MLAs along with one each from the BSP and the SP won the Lok Sabha elections.
Mayawati reportedly told the party cadre that the BSP won 10 seats in UP due to its traditional vote bank and the votes of the Samajwadi Party could not get transferred to their candidates. She stressed that the party would have to strengthen its own organisational structure and not depend on other parties to win votes. She also stressed on the need to increase the participation of members of other backward classes in the organisation.
Interestingly, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday morning shared the dais with Sangeeta Azad, Lalganj BSP MP, in Azamgarh to thank voters for backing the alliance.
While showing displeasure at the non-transfer of SP votes, Mayawati did not blame Akhilesh for it, but sources maintained that the BSP chief held the Congress and Shiv Pal Singh Yadav-led Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia (PSPL) responsible for the poor performance of the alliance.
Although Mayawati didn’t directly talk about the future of the alliance, she asked the party workers to adopt a “wait and watch” policy till the family dispute in the SP is over, according to BSP sources.
“Neither did she criticise the SP or Akhilesh, nor did she say that the alliance was over,” the source said.
When asked about Mayawati’s comments, SP Spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhry told PTI, “We will wait to know about official stand of the BSP on alliance’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections, after that we will decide what we have to do.”
Mayawati cited “poor performance” of its alliances in various States during the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections to emphasise that the BSP will have to strengthen its own organisational structure and not depend on other parties to win votes in the Assembly bypolls.
Her comments assume significance as the BSP does not usually contest bypolls.
At the time of stitching up an alliance with BSP, Akhilesh had said the alliance would last till UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was sent back to Gorakhpur as mahant of (Gorakhnath) temple.
“No matter how much you try, this alliance is not going to break. The alliance will go a long way. We have not forged this alliance only to oust Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Centre... We will not keep quiet until he and his disciple Yogi are unseated from power,” Akhilesh had said.
Mayawati also pressed for the need to increase the involvement of members of other backward classes in the party organisation by reviving district-level committees.
Meanwhile, with fissures appearing in the SP-BSP alliance, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma on Monday said the “gathbandhan” is “taking its last breath, and is on ventilator”.
“Thanks to the developmental works of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, people have broken the barriers of caste and religion. The gathbandhan is today taking its last breath, and is on ventilator,” he told PTI.
He added, “Alliances of opposing ideologies are never successful — be it the SP-Congress or the BSP-Congress. All experiments to forge caste-based alliances in Uttar Pradesh have proved to be a failure. People across the country have accepted Modiji’s “sabka saath, sabka vikaas, sabka vishwaas” and outright rejected such caste-based alliances.”
“The alliances which are formed or forged on the basis of caste or religion eventually lose their existence. In UP, there was an unnatural and opportunistic alliance, it was shattered by the caste-less (jaati-viheen) work of the BJP whose mantra is ‘sabka saath, sabka vikaas, sabka vishwaas’.”