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Mayawati ends her SP tie-up: ‘Will fight all polls alone’
Regional rivals-turned-friends SP and BSP won just 15 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, far behind the BJP tally of 62. The two parties had previously said they would fight upcoming assembly bypolls in the state on their own.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati said on Monday that her party has decided to contest all future elections independently, a remark that brought down the curtain on a “grand alliance” with the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) that attempted to pose a tough challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in this summer’s Lok Sabha elections.
Regional rivals-turned-friends SP and BSP won just 15 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, far behind the BJP tally of 62. The two parties had previously said they would fight upcoming assembly bypolls in the state on their own.
“Everyone is aware that forgetting everything of the past as also the anti-BSP and anti-Dalit decisions like reservation in promotions and bad law and order during the SP rule in 2012-17, the BSP adhered to the ‘gathbandhan dharma’ with the Samajwadi Party in the interest of the country,” the 63-year-old chief of the BSP tweeted on Monday.
“But the SP’s attitude after the elections has forced the BSP to think, will it be possible to defeat the BJP in the future by allying with it? This is not possible. Therefore, in the interest of the party and the movement, the party will contest all small and big elections on its own strength,” she added in the tweets posted in Hindi.
The BSP chief earlier said the possibility of an SP-BSP alliance was open in the future but that there was a need for a reform in the way the SP cadre worked. While asking party workers to get ready for the bypolls on their own strength, Mayawati complained that the SP failed to transfer its voter base to BSP candidates in the general elections.
Rejecting Mayawati’s remarks on Monday, SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said: “Akhilesh Yadav worked for the victory of the alliance. He neither ditched the alliance after defeat nor did he make any personal attack on alliance leaders. The SP has its ideology and policies and has been working for the welfare of all the communities.”
In January, Mayawati and Yadav buried two decades of acrimony to take on the BJP.
The tie-up was considered formidable because it, at least theoretically, brought together three big vote blocs — Yadavs, Jatavs and Muslims — who together constitute at least 35% of the state’s population. The combined vote share of the SP and the BSP was higher than the BJP in at least 41 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, according to 2014 election figures. The addition of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which considered the Jat community as its core base in western UP, was expected to add to the coalition’s strength, and pose a stiff challenge to the BJP.
But the BJP managed to consolidate Hindu votes across castes, targeted non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBC) and non-Jatav Dalits, and utilised the personal appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to raid the Opposition’s vote bank. The BSP, which fought 38 seats, won 10, up from zero in 2014. The SP fared worse, failing to improve on its 2014 tally of five and failing to win three family pocket boroughs of Kannauj, Firozabad and Badaun — a fact underlined by Mayawati. The RLD could not open its account.
Hours after Mayawati posted the tweets on Monday, the BJP took a swipe at Yadav, saying he was “punished” by the BSP chief as he “betrayed” his father Mulayam Singh Yadav and uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav.
“BSP chief Mayawati sought votes from the Dalits and marginalised them. She cannot think about anyone beyond her family. Her history is full of betrayals. On the other hand, Akhilesh Yadav had termed corruption and nepotism as socialism. He should have thought 100 times before joining hands with Mayawati for opportunistic and selfish politics,” Uttar Pradesh BJP spokesperson Harish Srivastava said.
Deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma also targeted Mayawati and Yadav, saying that the break-up of the alliance was a foregone conclusion.
The BSP chief’s tweets came a day after she held a 2.5-hour-long meeting and presented her analysis of the party’s performance. At the meeting, people aware of the developments said, Mayawati appeared to blame the SP for the outcome in the general election.
This is the second successive alliance forged by Yadav that has failed electorally. In the 2017 assembly election, he tied up with.
