LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) chief Mayawati launched a fresh salvo against Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday saying that while he claims he wanted to see her as the country’s Prime Minister, he could not even fulfill his own dream of becoming Uttar Pradesh CM despite cobbling up a bouquet of alliances with a number of smaller outfits.
The BSP chief, in a series of tweets, questioned how Akhilesh Yadav would have met someone else’s Prime Ministerial aspirations when he, with the consolidation of Muslims and Yadavs in his favour, failed to form a government in UP in the recently concluded Assembly elections.
Responding to Mayawati’s Thursday diatribe, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav admitted that he never wanted to break the alliance with the BSP stitched in 2019. He said that it was good that Mayawati was dreaming about becoming the PM. “We had tied
up with the BSP in 2019 and we wanted the alliance to survive so that the followers of Dr BR Ambedkar would have seen who became the country’s PM in future,” Akhilesh had said on the sidelines of an Iftar party in the state capital late on Thursday night.
It may be recalled that the SP and BSP had joined hands stitching a grand alliance against the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. However, the alliance failed to cut much ice among the voters. While the BSP gained from it and won 10 LS seats, the SP could not raise its 2014 tally and bagged just five seats losing some of its strongholds like Kannauj, Firozabad and Badaun. On the other hand, the BJP and its allies had won 64 of the 80 seats.
Meanwhile, the BSP supremo wondered how a party that managed to win just five seats in the last general election even after stitching up an alliance with the BSP would make her the Prime Minister. "They need to stop making such childish statements," she said in her Twitter post.
Mayawati added that irrespective of whether she became the CM or the PM in future or not, she would never become the President of the country in the interest of the weaker and deprived sections of society. “Therefore, the SP's dream of having its own CM in UP will never be fulfilled," she posted.
Even a day back, the BSP president had clarified that she had never nurtured the ambition of becoming the President of the country and that it was just a figment of imagination of the SP which wanted to have a clear path without any challenge from the BSP to the seat of power in UP if she would agree to become the President.
She had said, "I have not spent my life in comfort. I have struggled to work on the path shown by Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram to ensure that their followers and the downtrodden stand on their feet. Everyone knows that this can be done not by becoming the President, but by becoming the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and the Prime Minister of the country."
On Wednesday, Akhilesh Yadav had accused the BSP of having transferred its votes to the ruling BJP in UP Assembly polls and now, it would be interesting to see whether the saffron party made her President or not in return.