Lucknow: BSP chief Mayawati on Tuesday accused the ruling BJP and the Samajwadi Party of the bid to give a communal colour to next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, saying both outfits want the elections to be a "Hindu-Muslim affair".
Mayawati told reporters that both parties complement each other as their thought process is "casteist and communal".
The statement by Mayawati has come in the wake of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath invoking the alleged Kairana "exodus", and the Ram temple in Ayodhya during his public meetings.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav recently equated Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah with freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, attracting sharp reaction from the opponents.
"The BJP government in order to hide its failure and divert the attention from it has colluded with the SP," Mayawati told reporters here at a press conference.
They are making efforts to raise communal issues like the Ayodhya police firing (on karsevaks) and Jinnah so that the Assembly elections "become a Hindu-Muslim affair", she alleged.
"This naturally exposes vested political interests of the SP and the BJP. This is true that the SP and the BJP have always been complementary to each other and the thought process of both these parties is casteist and communal," she alleged.
"So, when the SP is in power, the BJP becomes stronger, but if the BSP is in power, the BJP becomes weak," she said.
The former UP chief minister said the public has now become aware of the "conspiracies" of the BJP and the SP.
"The BSP hopes that people of the state will not fall prey to any of the conspiracies," she said, adding that as elections draw near, the BJP and other anti-BSP parties start "enacting a drama to woo and mislead people".
She alleged that the Centre and the UP government in the past a couple of months made numerous announcements and laid several foundation stones besides inaugurating "half-baked works".
"This shows that the BJP is going to lose the Assembly elections," Mayawati said. Mayawati also claimed that the BSP will form the next government in the state with full majority.
She added that the elections will be contested under her leadership as all sections of society want her to be the chief minister of the state for the fifth time.
Targeting the Congress, Mayawati said had the party fulfilled half of the promises it had made during its long rule, it would not have been out of power at the Centre and in most states of the country.
Taking a jibe at the BJP and the SP for claiming huge wins in the elections, she said, "The SP is claiming that it will win 400 seats in the upcoming UP Assembly elections while BJP is claiming that it will win 300 seats. This is childish and 'hawa hawai'. From this point of view, the Election Commission has to increase the seats in the UP Assembly to 1,000."
To a question as to whom she considers a bigger rival, she said the SP and the BJP are "two sides of the same coin".
"We are confident that we will get absolute majority like the one in 2007," she said.
On the question of her party's tie-up with any political party, Mayawati said, "I have already said a number of times that the BSP will not enter into any alliance with any party, and will contest the elections on its own."
When asked question that the Congress will give 40 per cent tickets to women, she said the party should first form a law in this regard in the states ruled by it.
The Congress should have made the law when it was in power, the BSP chief said.
"They are now talking about 40 per cent but when they were in power, they could not make a law giving 33 per cent reservation to women. Not only the Congress, even the BJP is not able to make a law on it," she said.
PTI
