BSP supremo Mayawati said here on Saturday that both ‘Ali’ and ‘Bajrangbali’ belonged to the grand alliance. At a rally in the Samajwadi Party (SP) stronghold, Ms. Mayawati took a dig at U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s recent comments alluding that the grand alliance was a combine for Muslims. “ Hamare paas Ali bhi hai , Bajrangbali bhi hai . It is not me — it is Yogi who said that Bajarangbali is a Dalit,” she said. SP president Akhilesh Yadav echoed her sentiment. “The U.P. Chief Minister is telling us the caste of gods. Gods are angry,” he warned.
He described the Lok Sabha elections as the “vote for change” that would bring the “dispossessed to power.” Criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr. Yadav said, “People are disillusioned by the person who presented himself as a chaiwala in 2014. His promises turned out like a tea without milk.” This time, Mr. Yadav said, he had come as a chowkidar , and: “ Hum unki chowki chheen lenge (‘we will unseat him’).”
Earlier, Ms. Mayawati once again appealed to the Muslims to not to waste their votes on the Congress: “Muslims have suffered during the Congress rule as well. The Sachar Committee report is a testimony to that.”
In 2014, Budaun was one of the three seats in western Uttar Pradesh that the BJP could not wrest from SP. A seat with strong Yadav-Muslim presence, Budaun has been with the SP for the last six Lok Sabha elections.
Sitting MP Dharmendra Yadav is the nephew of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. He is locked into a triangular contest as the Congress has fielded Salim Iqbal Shervani, who has represented Budaun five times (four times on an SP ticket and once as a Congress candidate).
The BJP has brought in Dr. Sanghmitra Maurya, daughter of Swami Prasad Maurya, a Minister in the Yogi Adityanath government. In 2014, she unsuccessfully fought against Mulayam Singh Yadav in Mainpuri on a BSP ticket. Mr. Maurya had a long innings with the BSP before he parted ways with Mayawati in 2016.
Apart from the BJP’s vote bank, Dr. Maurya is also expected to cut into BSP’s Other Backward Class (OBC) base. One of the most backward districts of western Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Dharmendra Yadav held the BJP government responsible for putting a spanner into the development projects that he had initiated in the constituency.
Mr. Yadav thanked Ms. Mayawati for boosting the confidence of the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ workers by agreeing to hold a rally in Budaun. Ms. Mayawati talked of her connection to the constituency, which goes back to the days when she represented the Bilsi reserved seat in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
In a city synonymous with poet-lyricist Shakeel Budayuni, most of the speakers who spoke before the star campaigners made lyrical appeals to the crowd, which didn’t respond and remained unruly. The crowds in Deoband and Meerut, where BSP candidates are in the fray, were a great deal more disciplined. The police presence was limited because there was a BJP rally in the city as well, and members of the Bahujan Volunteer Force were not as enthusiastic.
The moment the rally got over, members of crowd walked away with the iron rods that were a part of the security arrangement. “This is their [Yadav] stronghold. We can’t do much. We have to vote for them with a heavy heart because it is behenji ’s [Mayawati’s] wish. But we don’t know what the future holds for us,” said Ravindra Kumar, a Jatav member of BVF from Seheswan.
