LUCKNOW: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Sunday ruled out the speculation of entering into any kind of alliance with any political party, including Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), in the UP assembly elections due next year, in a development that signalled her stance of being unwilling to be labelled as a leader pursuing minority appeasement.
This was in sharp contrast to the 2017 UP assembly elections when Mayawati fielded nearly 100 Muslim candidates, a move that backfired on the BSP boss reducing her party strength to just 19 seats.
Mayawati, in fact, sent out a pointed riposte to her wildly speculated alliance with AIMIM as “completely false, misguiding and factually wrong”.
Her positioning on going all alone in UP, as well as Uttarakhand, comes days after her party announced cobbling up an alliance with former BJP ally, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab.
The BSP had agreed to contest on 20 seats, leaving 97 seats with SAD in the 117 member assembly to take on the ruling Congress The BSP chief also announced that the party general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Satish Chandra Mishra would be the chief of the national coordinator of the media cell.
Mishra, a close associate of Mayawati, has been the brain behind the social engineering formula — comprising upper caste-Dalit consolidation — that catapulted the dalit queen to UP with an absolute majority for the first time in 2007 assembly elections.
It was, in fact, Mishra who represented the BSP when it announced its tie-up with the SAD in Punjab.
Mayawati’s decision to further prop Mishra is seen as her deft move to silence her detractors who have been alleging her of being under complete control of the BSP’s Brahmin leader while initiating sacking of as many as 11 party MLA, including the two veterans, Lalji Verma and Ram Achal Rajbhar.