UP Elections 2019: Mayawati attack on Congress dims opposition unity chances

NEW DELHI: The BJP may not face a united opposition in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 general election, a likelihood that appears to have strengthened after the Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati attacked both the ruling party and the Congress on her birthday this week.

Earlier, the Akhilesh Yadavled Samajwadi Party, which had contested the 2017 assembly polls in alliance with the Congress, dropped enough hints about its option to contest the next parliamentary election alone by undertaking an exercise to identify candidates for all 80 seats in the state and the five seats in Uttarakhand.

Mayawati, in her birthday speech on Monday, targeted the BJP as well as the Congress saying that both parties missed no opportunity to try to finish the BSP, which she said is the true follower of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar’s political ideology. The BSP chief ’s choice of the occasion was significant since she traditionally sends out her political message to the party workers and cadres on her birthday, which the BSP celebrates as ‘Jan Kalyankari Diwas’ (People’s welfare day) every year.


The SP, on the other hand, has so far refrained from making any direct statement on the possibility of an alliance in the run-up to the general election, but its chief had recently invited opposition parties at a meeting to discuss the issue of alleged tampering with electoral voting machines. Both BSP and Congress decided to stay away from that meeting.

Mayawati’s attack on both BJP and Congress indicates that she may have taken heart from her party’s performance in urban local bodies’ polls. “Her feedback is that the BSP’s support base among Scheduled Caste voters is intact,” a BSP member said on condition of anonymity.

The BSP chief ’s outburst marks a shift from her position in August last year, when she had dropped hints about the need for a seat sharing arrangement among opposition parties.