Mayawati makes U-turn on alliance

Lucknow: BSP president Mayawati, after defending her party’s alliance with Samajwadi Party, has done a turnaround and asked her cadres not to play such an ‘active role’ in upcoming by-elections to Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur assembly seats.

At a meeting with her party leaders, the BSP president said that while the BSP-SP alliance would be in place in the 2019 general elections, she was less than willing to be part of the recent Lok Sabha  by-election-like ‘understanding again’.

The by-polls in Kairana parliamentary constituency will be held following the demise of incumbent BJP MP Hukum Singh and the by-election to the Noorpur assembly seat has been necessitated by the death of BJP MLA Lokendra Pratap Singh.

Political analysts feel that the BSP’s blow hot-blow cold stand is designed to keep her new ally, the Samajwadi Party, on its toes.

The BSP is apparently upset at the fact that the BSP candidate lost the recent Rajya Sabha elections and Ms Mayawati has said that SP president Akhilesh Yadav should have ensured the victory of the BSP candidate more than the victory of SP candidate Jaya Bachchan.

Ms Mayawati has also told her followers that she would rather like to focus on rebuilding of the party machinery, which has been dented severely in the past few years due to the exit of leaders like Naseemuddin Siddiqui and Swami Prasad Maurya.

While Maurya joined the BJP and is a cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath government in the state while Naseemuddin Siddiqui, has switched sides to the Congress.

Though Ms Mayawati is keen to work out an alliance for the Lok Sabha elections, she also wants to be projected as a alliance leader and get seats of her choice.