Day after Mayawati told party workers that they will contest by-polls on all 11 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh alone, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief on Tuesday clarified that she was just taking a break from her partnership with the Samajwadi Party and that it was “not permanent”.
“Ever since the SP-BSP coalition took place, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and his wife Dimple Yadav have given me a lot of respect. I also forgot all our differences in the interest of the nation and gave them respect,” Mayawati was quoted as saying by ANI.
She further said the relationship was not just for politics and will continue forever.
However, she asserted that her party cannot ignore political compulsions. She said even the ‘Yadav’ community — the base vote of the SP — did not support the party in the Lok Sabha elections adding that even strong contenders of the party were defeated.
On the future of the SP-BSP alliance in the state, she said the break was not a permanent one.
She said if SP chief Akhilesh Yadav succeeds in his political work, the BSP will once again join hands with the SP.
“If we feel in future that the SP chief succeeds in his political work, we will again work together. But if he doesn’t, it will be good for us to work separately. So we have decided to fight the byelections alone,” she said.
Addressing a meeting of party leaders from Uttar Pradesh in Delhi on Monday, Mayawati, the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, reportedly said that BSP had not benefited from the alliance with the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP in the Lok Sabha elections.
The election results were discussed in a closed-door review meeting.
BSP contested the Lok Sabha elections in an alliance with SP and RLD. The alliance won a total of 15 seats, with the BSP winning 10 of the 38 it contested and SP winning five of the 37 it contested. Even Akhilesh Yadav’s wife, Dimple Yadav, lost the Yadav bastion of Kannauj.
RLD failed to win any of the three seats it contested.
Eleven Assembly seats were vacated because the sitting legislators were elected to the Lok Sabha. Of the 11, nine were from BJP while one each from BSP and SP.
The BSP supremo had on Sunday removed election coordinators of six states – Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Odisha – and two state presidents.
The BJP had defeated the alliance winning 62 seats of the 80 seats in the state