NEW DELHI: The Bahujan Samaj Party would go it alone rather than begging for seats in any alliance, party supremo Mayawati said, asserting her decision to have no pact with the Congress in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.In a statement on Tuesday, Mayawati lashed out at both the Congress and the BJP, saying her party will never compromise with the self-respect of Dalits, tribals, backwards, Muslims, other minorities and the poor among the upper castes.
She accused the BJP and Congress governments of treating these communities with malice. “This is the reason the BSP had made it conditional that her party be given a respectable number of seats to join a poll alliance,” Mayawati said. “This means that the BSP will not beg for seats in any alliance. If we don’t get respectable number of seats, the alliance will not happen and we will continue to fight polls on our own,” she said.
The statement came on the death anniversary of BSP founder Kanshi Ram.
Targeting the Congress and the BJP, the BSP chief said neither party worked in the interests of the poor from the upper castes and the remaining majority. Mayawati said the BJP was ‘casteist’, ‘communal’, ‘arrogant’, ‘malicious’ and ‘narrow-minded’, and added her party would continue to strive for ousting the central government.
Citing the protests among the upper castes over the Modi government’s decision to restore the original stringent provision in the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, she said the BSP never supported misuse of any law. “The BSP had ensured that the law was not misused during its four terms in power in Uttar Pradesh.”
If arch-rivals BSP and Samajwadi Party join hands against the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, which gave the saffron party as many as 71 of the 80 MPs in 2014, it could dent Modi’s hopes of retaining power. In three Lok Sabha bypolls, the SP-BSP alliance handed a humiliating defeat to the ruling BJP. If the BSP goes alone, the BJP may again do well, feel political observers.