Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati (BSP) has on Sunday made it clear that her party has no truck with the Bhim Sena of Chandrashekar Azad ‘Ravana’ and neither had she any relation with such an outfit or its leader.

She also said she was open to an alliance with other parties provided the BSP got a fair quantum of seats. Failing this her party was prepared to go it alone in the polls.

Advertisement

The BSP president, who entered her new 9 Mall Avenue residence on Sunday, came down hard on the Bhim Sena and its leader. Without naming the outfit or Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravana’, Mayawati said at a press conference that a person recently released from jail had been calling her ‘Bua’, but she had no relation either with him or his outfit.

Her relation was with the common man, dalits, adavasis and people from the Backward Castes and the BSP could not be associated with people who had been jailed for violence, Mayawati stated.

Had such people followed the path shown by Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar or Kanshiram, they would have worked towards carrying the BSP movement forward instead of floating a new outfit, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister added.

The Bhim Sena chief had chosen to address Mayawati as his `Bua’ (Aunt) after being released from the Saharanpur jail on Friday where he had been locked for 15 months. He had been booked under the National Security Act (NSA) by the UP government for his alleged role in the violence which broke out in the Shabbirpur village in Saharanpur district in western Uttar Pradesh in May 2017.

On the purported move of a `maha gatbandhan’ (grand alliance) and the BSP entering into a pact with other political parties in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as also in the poll bound states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh and Rajasthan, Mayawati said her party was not averse to the same. However any alliance would take place only if the BSP got a reasonable number of seats during the seat sharing process. Failing this, the BSP would go it alone, she emphasized.

The former chief minister was scathing in her criticism of the BJP and its use of the name of late prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. She said while Vajpayee was alive the BJP did not follow the path shown by him. But immediately after his demise the BJP was exploiting Vajpayee’s name for political gains. She said the BJP was using diversionary tactics to divert the attention of the people from its failures.

The BJP was not sympathetic to the cause of the Dalits. She added even the Backwards, Adivasis and the religious minorities were wary of the BJP. The party had only sold dreams to the people but it was only the capitalists who had benefitted under the present dispensation at the Centre.

Mayawati termed the mob lynching in the name of cow vigilantism as a blot on democracy and attacked the BJP government for its laxity and indifference towards curbing the same.