- Sunday, February 23, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Wednesday (16) slammed the Samajwadi Party (SP) over the meeting of a few of her party’s suspended state legislators’ with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav a day before. In a series of tweets written in Hindi, she accused the SP of playing dirty politics and called it “anti Dalit”.
Mayawati said the SP was falsely propagating in the media that some BSP members of the Uttar Pradesh legislative Assembly were switching over to its ranks. She said those members of the legislative Assembly (MLA) were suspended from the BSP long ago for defeating the son of a Dalit candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections in connivance with the SP and an industrialist.
ALSO READ: We hope Mayawati gives us tickets for 2022 UP polls, else we’ll see other options: Rebel BSP MLA
The Dalit leader, who has been the chief minister of UP four terms but completed an entire tenure of five years only once, said if the SP had been a little honest towards the suspended MLAs, it would not have kept them in limbo. She said since the SP leadership knows that if it takes those BSP MLAs, the party will face a rebellion and a consequent split with people lining up to join the BSP. She then said that the character of the SP has always been anti-Dalit and it is not ready to change that stand. She also accused the SP of suspending the work that her government had undertaken during her 2007-12 tenure. She also cited an example whereby the former SP government of Yadav changed back the name of Sant Ravidas Nagar district to Bhadohi and called it “highly condemnable”.
Mayawati, who made an alliance with the SP for the 2019 Lok Sabha election but failed to deliver, also called the meeting between the SP chief and the suspended MLAs of her party as a “drama” eyeing the election of the president and block chief.
“By the way, this new drama of SP, done yesterday to publicise in the media about meeting the suspended MLAs of BSP, etc., seems more like a maneuver done for the election of president and block chief after the panchayat elections in UP. The BSP has emerged as a party of people’s aspirations, which will continue to be the case,” she said in another tweet.
On Tuesday, around nine suspended BSP MLAs met Yadav in Lucknow.
While some sources said they could switch over to the SP ahead of the UP Assembly polls, other reports said they could set up a new party altogether. The BSP had 18 legislators in the Assembly after one seat was lost in a byelection. Of them, nine were suspended last year where two more – Lalji Verma and Ram Achal Rajbhar – were expelled recently, revealing the serious rift the party has been facing within.
