Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati celebrated her 63rd birthday on Tuesday. Though the celebration was austere, compared to the previous years, the significance of the day was much greater, considering that it became an occasion for the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister to position herself in the national scene ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Mayawati's party might have drawn a zero in the previous general elections, and received a humiliating drubbing in the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. But now, while she should be expected to be fighting for survival, she is aiming at much more than that, perhaps even the prime minister's chair.
“It is Uttar Pradesh that decides who will form government at the Centre and who will become the prime minister. So, I appeal to the cadres of the BSP and the SP to keep all their differences aside, and help ensure victory for all gathbandhan candidates,” she said at a press conference in Lucknow, giving a clear indication of how she views the coming Lok Sabha polls.
“My birthday is being celebrated at a time when the elections are going to happen. Our party has decided to fight elections with the Samajwadi Party,” she said.
Mayawati's party has stitched an alliance with arch-rival SP and the two parties believe that the tie-up will lead to a formidable caste combination that will not allow the BJP to repeat its impressive performance in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when the saffron party bagged 71 out of 80 seats.
Mayawati has been keen on keeping the Congress out of the alliance, as she believes that the grand old party will not provide any benefit to her party, even as her dalit vote bank transfers fully to whoever she allies with. She is also learnt to view the Congress as a rival suitor for dalit votes.
At her joint press conference with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav to announce the SP-BSP alliance as well as in her media briefing on Tuesday, Mayawati took on both the BJP and the Congress, even as she sought to reach out to the Muslim voters, making a pitch for an enhanced representation of the community in government jobs and reservation based on economic status. This is significant, since a view has been expressed that the Muslim votes might get split between the SP-BSP gathbandhan and the Congress, which has declared that it will contest all seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Akhilesh Yadav, while not as acerbic in his statements about the Congress as Mayawati, is keen on not upsetting her primarily because of the transferability of the dalit votes, which was evident in the by-elections in UP, for which the two parties had an understanding. Pointing to the significance of Mayawati to her alliance partner, Yadav made it clear in their joint press conference that any insult to the BSP supremo will be an insult to him. He was among the first to greet her on her birthday on Tuesday as he called on her at her residence in Lucknow, gifting her a shawl and flowers.
