Only the Bahujan Samaj Party can stop the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, its supremo Mayawati asserted on Sunday. Neither a united Samajwadi Party nor an SP-Congress alliance stand any chance and voting for either of these parties would help the BJP, she cautioned voters.
Dismissing the prospects of an SP-Congress alliance under the leadership of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, Ms. Mayawati asked voters to choose between the “tainted face” of the Yadav scion and the “clean face” of her party, the BSP. Ms. Mayawati’s statement comes at a time when the Congress and SP, along with the RLD, are close to clinching an alliance in the State even as the SP is torn in an internal battle over its symbol — cycle.
“People of the State need to decide whether they want as CM a tainted face under whom Muzaffarnagar, Dadri, Mathura and Bulandshar incidents happened or the clean face of the BSP, which would check all communal and goonda elements,” the Dalit leader said here, addressing the media on her 61st birthday.
Mr. Yadav, however, has many times publicly claimed that an SP-Congress alliance would fetch more than 300 of the 403 seats in U.P.
Like previous years, Ms. Mayawati celebrated her birthday as a Jan Kalyankari Diwas or People’s Welfare Day in the State capital, urging her party workers to come to the aid of the poor, ill and the needy on the day. While she was in power, she used the day to announce major welfare schemes.
Ballot lesson for BJP
And her return to power was a key aspect of her hour-long address here. By defeating the BJP in U.P. and forming a “full majority” government, the BSP would deliver a big blow to the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, which would then not dare to take “anti-people” and “immature” decisions such as demonetisation, she said.
Ms. Mayawati said that though there were no public protests or expression of anger by those affected by demonetisation, the people would teach the BJP a lesson through the ballot. The BJP should prepare to face the consequences, she said.
While she continued to target the Modi government for its failure to fulfil poll promises and ushering in ache din , Ms. Mayawati once again predicted that a split in the “base vote” of the SP, the Yadavs, would rule it out of contention and voting for it would amount to helping the BJP. Though she termed the SP fight as being between Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav, she curiously did not mention Mulayam Singh, even as the battle between him and his son for the party ownership is now in the public domain.
Many times in recent months, Ms. Mayawati had alleged that the Yadav infighting was a ploy by Mr. Mulayam Singh to promote the image of his son as a martyr-hero and shed his anti-incumbency disadvantage by transferring it to Mr. Shivpal.
She dismissed the SP as a party belonging to “one family, one caste and one region”.
Cautions U.P. people
The BSP chief also said that the Opposition was making efforts to ensure that her party was restricted to its core votebank, and cautioned the people of U.P. to not fall for the conspiracy.
Questioning the timing of the BJP’s allegations against her family members and their wealth, she asked why did the BJP, which has been in power for two-and-a-half years, not take any steps earlier.
In a lighter moment, as her long speech touched the hour mark, Ms. Mayawati looked at the packed house of journalists at the BSP’s Mall Avenue office here and said: “Just five-ten more minutes. I know you have been listening for a long time...but it’s me who is having to do the talking.”
