Reiterating her stand, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has said that her party will not go for alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha election if it does not get a respectable share of seats.
Mayawati also spurned the overtures of Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad 'Ravana' who had addressed Mayawati as 'Buaji', saying some leaders were trying to take political mileage or save themselves by taking her name. Chandrashekhar was recently released from Saharanpur jail after 16 months as he was detained under National Security Act following the caste violence in the district in April last year.
Addressing a press conference at her new private residence here on Sunday, the BSP chief said, "We will agree to alliance anywhere and in any election only when we get a respectable share of seats, otherwise the BSP will prefer to go it alone."
With about seven months left for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the opposition parties are planning to form a grand alliance to remove the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party from power. In the recently held by-elections in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur, Phulpur, Kairana and Noorpur, the united alliance of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party had defeated the ruling BJP.
Earlier on May 27 this year, addressing the her party's national convention in Lucknow, Mayawati had said that the BSP would tie-up with a party only after getting a respectable number of seats, or else the party would contest the polls alone. She had also asserted that the BSP was in talks with several parties for an alliance.
The BSP supremo also said that she had no relation with Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad. Mayawati said that she was related to only the common people, Dalits and the people from backward castes.
The statement comes after Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad had called the former Chief Minister of UP as 'Buaji' (aunt).
Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BSP chief said that the saffron party was hiding its failures by diversionary tactics. She said that the BJP is trying to gain political mileage by using the name of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
"The BJP governments in states and at the Centre are trying to hide their failures by diversionary tactics. They have not fulfilled their election promises. They are trying to use Atalji's death for political gains."
The BSP chief has made this allegation exactly one month after the death of Vajpayee who passed away on August 16, 2018 at a hospital in the national capital.
BSP president Mayawati on Sunday made grih pravesh (house warming ceremony) at her new private bungalow after vacating her government accommodation on the orders of the Supreme Court.
Thanking former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for this new bungalow, Mayawati said that the financial contribution given by her supporters after the BJP government implicated her through the CBI and other central agencies in the Taj heritage corridor cases in 2003 enabled her to build such a magnificent bungalow.
"I am really thankful to the former PM and the BJP, whose decision to harass me led to construction of this new bungalow here and another in New Delhi," she said, addressing the media here.
She also clarified that after vacating her government bungalow, she was forced to stay in New Delhi due to renovation and security related work in her new bungalow.
The former Chief Minister also allowed media persons to go through the entire bungalow and watch the morels and the artefact fixed on the walls.
The bungalow, addressed 9, Mall Avenue, is at a stone's throw from the 13-A Mall Avenue government bungalow which she had occupied in the capacity of former Chief Minister of UP. The BSP office is also situated nearby.
The Rs 15-crore bungalow was purchased in 2010. Carved in red sandstone -- similar to the one used in Dalit memorials and parks constructed during BSP regime, the massive bungalow, spread over an area of more than 71,000 square feet, was purchased by Mayawati barely three years after she stormed to power with full majority in UP in 2007. With a constructed area of more than 53,000 square feet, Mayawati's private bungalow is almost twice the size of the government bungalow she vacated.
