Loss in Rajya Sabha polls has not dented ties with SP: Mayawati

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Monday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for being “anti-Dalit” and told a gathering of her MLAs and zonal coordinators that the alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) is intact despite the loss of her candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections last week.

“You chant the name of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar in your Mann ki Baat but the Dalit and oppressed sections of society have understood that this is just propaganda and theatrics. In the last four years, the BJP and the RSS, which controls the party, have proved that their vision and governance is narrow, casteist and communal. Their intention is to build a society and nation which is diametrically opposite of the equality and modernity that Dr Ambedkar had envisaged in the Constitution,” said the BSP chief in a statement issued after her party meeting.

After meeting her party MLAs, Mayawati proceeded to talk to the BSP’s zonal coordinators, who form the backbone of the party’s organisational structure in Uttar Pradesh. She told them that the main aim of the BJP’s move to get “a rich candidate to defeat the BSP’s Bhimrao Ambedkar” in the Rajya Sabha elections is to “drive a wedge between the SP and the BSP”.

“The BJP is alarmed at the BSP’s alliance with the SP which caused them a shock defeat in their citadel in Gorakhpur and Phulpur in the Lok Sabha by-polls. They are now spreading all sorts of rumours and devising propaganda aimed at splitting our alliance,” said Mayawati.

Upcoming polls

After the by-polls, in which where the BJP lost the seats, previously held by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya respectively, another by-poll is due for Kairana Lok Sabha seat which has fallen vacant after the demise of the BJP’s Hukum Singh. The BSP will not put up a candidate and is expected to support the SP’s nominee.

In return, the SP is believed to have decided to support the BSP in next month’s Legislative Council elections, to 12 seats. Of these, seven are held by the SP, one of which is Akhilesh Yadav’s seat. The BSP and the BJP have two seats each, and Ajit Singh’s RLD has one.

Given the composition of the UP Legislative Assembly, the BJP is expected to win at least ten seats, and if the SP and the Congress support the BSP, Mayawati’s party can secure one seat, or even two, if Akhilesh Yadav sacrifices his own seat in her favour.

Defends alliance

Mayawati, on her part, maintained the alliance between SP and BSP has not been forged for “narrow political gains” but to drive out the BJP, which has caused “unparalleled damage to the lives of the oppressed, the Dalits, the Muslims and the honest, trading class through measures like demonetisation and GST”.

“The people knew for 60-70 years that the BJP and the RSS have a narrow-minded and communal vision. That is why they had been kept on the margins of Indian politics and policy-making. But they got one chance and in the last about four years, the country has experienced the havoc that their communal, casteist and narrow-minded government has wreaked. That is why it is important for all right-thinking people and movements such as the BSP to ensure that the BJP is driven out,” said Mayawati in a statement.

“Our alliance with the SP is not opportunistic. It is being done in the service of the nation. It is our duty to tell our people that the BJP-RSS is a bundle of lies and they will go to any extent to break our unity to come to power,” she added.

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