LUCKNOW: A day after five rebel BSP MLAs met Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, triggering speculation of a switch-over before assembly polls, BSP chief Mayawati termed the meeting an eyewash.
She said it was a “drama” aimed at deriving mileage in the run-up to elections of zila panchayat chairpersons and block pramukhs.
Lashing out at SP for being a casteist outfit adept at manipulation and poaching, Mayawati said, by using the media to put out news of a meeting with BSP MLAs, SP was trying to fool people.
“BSP suspended these MLAs a long time back when they sabotaged the Rajya Sabha election of a Dalit in association with Samajwadi Party and an industrialist.
If SP was honest in its dealings with these MLAs, it would not have kept them in limbo for so long.
The party is aware that if these BSP MLAs join their party, their own members would rebel.
And some are already waiting to join BSP,” the former UP chief minister said.
The seven members who were suspended by Mayawati in October 2020 included Chaudhary Aslam Ali, Hakim Lal Bind, Mohammad Mujtaba Siddiqui, Aslam Raini, Sushma Patel, Hargovind Bhargava and Bandana Singh.
More recently, on June 3, Mayawati expelled the head of BSP legislative party and former minister Lalji Verma and former state president Ram Achal Rajbhar from the party on charges of anti-party activity during panchayat elections.
Earlier, two other MLAs had rebelled as well.
Thus, the party is left with seven MLAs of the 19 elected in 2017.
BSP and SP had come together in a historic move to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in a ‘mahagatbandhan’, but their relationship has been wobbly since Mayawati called off ties after the election debacle in which the two managed only 15 seats of 80.
Mayawati has since accused SP of working against dalits, a charge she repeated even on Wednesday.
“It is known that SP has always been anti-Dalit and they are refusing to change themselves.
When SP was in power, it stopped all projects initiated by the previous BSP government and created hurdles in the formation of Sant Ravidas Nagar district,” she said.