'BSP doesn't have an official Twitter account': Mayawati denies party releasing poster on opposition unity

After 22 years, two rival opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh – the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party – may come together again in the name of opposition unity to take on the BJP, if a poster tweeted by the BSP Twitter account is to be believed. However, BSP supremo Mayawati has dissociated from the poster and denied that her party released it.

The poster released from the BSP Twitter account late on Sunday, just a week before the opposition rally called by the RJD in Patna on August 27, soon did the rounds of social media and hogged headlines.
 
But BSP chief Mayawati has vehemently denied the party releasing any such poster. “When BSP does not have any official account on Twitter, then where is the question of the party releasing any such poster,” said Mayawati in a statement issued in Lucknow.
 
The BSP chief said that reports appearing in a section of media attributing the poster to BSP were false, concocted and mischievous. “Media should have taken a statement from the BSP before publishing such reports,” she said.   
 
The BSP-SP had first struck an alliance in the 1993 Assembly polls when the then Kalyan Singh government was dismissed following the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992. Both the political parties, with different vote-banks and divergent ideologies, fought the assembly polls and formed the government in 1993.
 
But the honeymoon period between the SP and BSP did not last long following the June 2, 1995 State Guest House case in which Mayawati was holed up in a suite and BSP MLAs were abducted by SP goons after BSP withdrew support from the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led alliance government. Later, Mayawati had formed the government with support from the BJP.
 
But even the BSP-BJP alliance did not last long following withdrawal of support by the BJP. In the 1996 Assembly elections, BSP had a seat-sharing arrangement with the Congress but that helped the latter gain at the cost of the BSP. Since then, Mayawati has never had any alliance with any political party in Uttar Pradesh.
 
In the picture tweeted late Sunday from a BSP Twitter account, Mayawati is depicted appealing to ‘all opposition parties to unite for social justice’. Significantly, for the first time SP President Akhilesh Yadav found a prominent place in the posters, while Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s picture is missing.
 
Others opposition leaders who found place on the poster after Akhilesh included former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, his father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, All-India Trinamool Congress President and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee as well as AICC President Sonia Gandhi.
 
But going by the BSP’s drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and dismal performance in the 2017 Assembly elections, BSP insiders claim that Mayawati is desperately looking for political crutches to make the elephant walk again. The party could not win a single seat in the Lok Sabha polls and ended with only 19 seats in the recently-concluded Assembly elections.  

The BSP has so far not confirmed Mayawati’s participation in the opposition’s Patna rally, but party sources claim that she may send Satish Chandra Mishra or some other leaders to ensure BSP’s presence. Congress sources claim that Mayawati may attend the Congress convened opposition rally in Dalit-dominated Valsad in Gujarat on September 1, 2017. Mayawati had resigned from the Rajya Sabha membership recently when she was not allowed to speak on issues related to Dalits.