Unhappy Maya ‘not’ to ally in elections

New Delhi: After reaping electoral gains from the Mahagathbandhan in Uttar Pradesh, which proved disastrous for her alliance partner the Samajwadi Party, BSP supremo Mayawati seems to have turned against the electoral pact now and decided to go solo for the 2022 state polls as well as the coming bypolls in 11 Assembly seats.   

While the BSP managed to increase its tally from zero to 10 in the Lok Sabha polls, the SP numbers remained stagnant at five as also that of the RLD which failed to open its account like in 2014.  

At a meeting of BSP office bearers and newly-elected MPs in the capital on Monday, Ms Mayawati said party workers should not depend on the alliance to win votes but work to improve the party's organisation. This was the clearest indication that the Dalit czarina was not happy with the numbers the SP-BSP-RLD alliance managed to get in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.  

She also asked the office bearers, MLAS and newly-elected MPs to be prepared to contest the assembly by-elections on their own, sources said. Her remarks assume more significance as the BSP does not usually contest Assembly bypolls. A total of 11 Assembly bypolls are due in Uttar Pradesh after MLAs won the Lok Sabha polls. Nine BJP MLAs won the Lok Sabha elections, while one each from BSP and SP were elected to the lower house.

Ms Mayawati said that the the BSP won 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh due to its traditional votebank and the votes of Samajwadi Party could not get transferred to its candidates.

The BSP chief cited the poor performance of its alliances in various states during assembly and Lok Sabha elections to drive home the point that the BSP will have to strengthen its own organisational structure and not depend on other parties to win votes. Ms Mayawati had last week, removed election coordinators of six states and two state presidents on Sunday, following the poor show in the Lok Sabha elections.

Merely five months earlier, both SP and BSP had said that their alliance was "permanent", and would be alive for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections.

The alliance between the SP and BSP was touted as a tight case of political arithmetic which, however, was routed by the second Modi wave.

This was the second time, the arch rivals had come together since 1993 in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. At that time, the two parties had managed to keep a resurgent BJP out of power in the state, but later had a bitter fall out capped by what is now known as the Guest House incident.