Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Sunday said “casteist” and “communal” parties are having sleepless nights ahead of the Uttar Pradesh urban local body polls after her party gave adequate representation to the Muslim community in the upcoming election. The BSP has fielded 11 Muslim candidates on 11 out of the 17 mayoral seats, a strategy perceived as an attempt to divide the Samajwadi Party’s (SP) traditional Muslim-Yadav vote bank.
“Politics has heated up here due to the BSP giving a proper representation to the Muslim community in the elections for the mayors’ posts in 17 municipal corporations. Casteist and communal parties are having sleepless nights due to this,” the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in a tweet in Hindi.
“The BSP is an Ambedkarwadi (Ambedkarite) party that follows the policy and principle of ‘sarvajan hitay’ and ‘sarvajan sukhay’ and has formed its government in Uttar Pradesh four times on that basis. It always gave proper representation to Muslims and other communities. Therefore, I appeal to people to pay more attention to their own interests and not to the conspiracies of our rivals,” she added.
The BSP is relying on cadre mobilization, street-corner meetings, door- to-door campaigns and publicising Mayawati’s message in the urban local bodies’ election campaign while its rival parties, including the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), are organising big rallies and road shows to woo the voters.
On Thursday, the BSP chief called upon the people to vote for change in urban local bodies by supporting her party in the civic polls. In a series of tweets, Mayawati said vote for change would also provide relief to the people from corruption in the local bodies, lack of development (including roads, sanitation and drains) as well as arbitrary increase in house tax and huge interest on it.
The urban local body polls are scheduled to be held on May 4 and May 11 and the counting of votes will take place on May 13.
