BSP not to support anyone in forthcoming bypolls, says Mayawati

Mayawati has also told her followers that she would rather like to focus on rebuilding of the party machinery

Picture Credit: PTI/ File image

Lucknow: The BSP, which enabled the success of Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates in the Phulpur and Gorakhpur parliamentary bypolls by successfully transferring its votes to them, will in future not play such an "active role", according to party chief Mayawati. At a meeting with her party leaders, office bearers and legislators on Monday, the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, while dropping enough hints that the BSP-SP alliance would be in place in the 2019 general elections, said she was less than willing to be part of a Gorakhpur-like "electoral understanding again", as far as the coming bypolls in Kairana parliamentary constituency are concerned. The seat had fallen vacant after the demise of incumbent BJP MP Hukum Singh. BSP is also unlikely to support any political party for the bypolls to the Noorpur assembly seat which fell vacant after the death of the sitting BJP legislator in a road accident. The party's stand is being seen in political circles as a carrot and stick approach of Mayawati towards SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, who, despite his best efforts, could not get the sole BSP candidate to the Rajya Sabha in recent biennial polls. 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 veteran 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, Siddiqui, the one-time minority face of the BSP has switched sides to the Congress. Insiders say that while the BSP supremo was keen to stitch up a "workable alliance" with the one-time bitter arch rival, the Samajwadi Party, she does not also want to be seen as yielding too much space.