New Delhi: A day after she expelled former party MLA Imran Masood for advocating a tie-up with the Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati announced unequivocally Wednesday that she would fight the 2024 general elections on her own.
Mayawati said the BSP’s aversion to an alliance either with the BJP or the newly-minted Opposition bloc INDIA stemmed from the fact that these parties were “anti-poor, casteist, communal and capitalist” in nature.
The BSP will offer an alternative to the Opposition’s politics of “patchwork approach or manipulation”, she added.
“NDA and India alliance are composed mostly of parties that are anti-poor, casteist, communal, and pro-capitalist. These are policies against which the BSP is waging a relentless battle and that is why the question of contesting elections in alliance with them does not arise. Hence, I appeal to the media — no fake news please,” Mayawati said in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
She also reiterated her stand – first declared on 19 July — that the BSP fight alone in the upcoming state polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana.
“BSP, like in 2007, will single-handedly contest the upcoming Lok Sabha and four state assembly general elections by uniting the crores of neglected people on the basis of mutual brotherhood, rather than indulging in manipulation or the patchwork approach of the Opposition. The media should not spread misconceptions again and again,” she posted.
Significantly, her announcement comes a day ahead of the third meeting of the Opposition’s INDIA alliance in Mumbai on 31 August and 1 September, during which 26 parties will brainstorm a joint strategy against the BJP.
On Wednesday, the BSP expelled Masood, who had switched from the Samajwadi Party (SP) after the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. The charges against him were “indiscipline” and “anti-party activities”.
Before his SP stint, Masood represented the Muzaffarabad constituency (abolished after delimitation) between 2007 and 2012 as a Congress MLA.
The BSP’s footprint has shrunk in Uttar Pradesh due to a series of electoral reverses — the party’s tally in the assembly dropped from 206 in 2007 to 1 in 2022.
In the 2018 Rajasthan polls, six candidates contesting on BSP tickets won, while two emerged as winners in Chhattisgarh. The party drew a blank in Madhya Pradesh in 2018, where it had bagged four seats in 2013.
Despite its reduced presence in state assemblies, the BSP managed to send 10 MPs to the Lok Sabha in 2019 — an improvement from 2014, when it failed to get any candidate elected. In 2009, however, its tally was much higher at 21.
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