New Delhi: Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) should join the Opposition’s INDIA alliance for the 2024 general election, BSP MP Shyam Singh Yadav said on Tuesday. He said if the Opposition parties contest the Lok Sabha elections in alliance in Uttar Pradesh, they can give a “good fight” to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“If you ask me, I will say very frankly, very clearly and very unambiguously that my party should also join the INDIA Alliance. This is my personal opinion. But the BSP supremo (Mayawati) will do what she thinks, we are bound by her decision… It is my personal opinion that the BSP should be a part of the INDIA Alliance… There is no doubt that if all the parties contest together, we will be able to give a good fight (in Uttar Pradesh),” he was quoted by news agency ANI as saying.
The INDIA bloc, an alliance of 28 Opposition parties against the BJP, on Tuesday held its fourth meeting. It discussed seat-sharing and a probable prime ministerial candidate if the alliance wins. Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee proposed the name of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for the coveted post.
The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, a BSP rival in UP, is also part of the alliance.
In August, BSP chief Mayawati had ruled out entering any alliances for the 2024 general elections. She had said her party would neither partner with the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
She said the BSP would go solo as the two groups were “anti-poor, casteist, communal and pro-rich”
“Despite the manipulations and maneuvering of the opponents, the BSP will contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the assembly polls on its own like in 2007 (Uttar Pradesh polls) and unite millions of neglected people on the basis of mutual brotherhood.”
Mayawati became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for the fourth time in 2007. However, since then, her support base seems to have eroded. In the 2022 assembly elections, she could win only one seat.
In the 2019 general elections, Mayawati partnered with Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. Its seat tally zoomed from zero to 10.
Earlier this month, Mayawati named her nephewAkash Anand, as her successor in the Bahujan Samaj Party.