BSP chief Mayawati has firmly denied that the results of the Assembly elections were a reflection on her government and its performance.
Addressing a press conference after submitting her resignation to the governor on Wednesday morning, Ms Mayawati said, “If people had been dissatisfied with my government then my position would have been something like that of Lalu Yadav in Bihar. Dalits have voted for the BSP across the state and my dalit vote base is intact,” she said.
Ms Mayawati attributed her party’s failure at the polls to the minority sub-quota issue and said that this led to a mass transfer of Muslim votes to the Samajwadi Party.
She said that 70 per cent of the Muslim votes had gone to the SP due to the minority reservation issue.
Ms Mayawati also blamed the media for keeping the issue alive throughout the elections by repeatedly highlighting it.
“The Congress raised the issue of reservation for backward Muslims for their political gains soon after the Vidhan Sabha elections were declared and this was opposed strongly to by the BJP which used the issue to attract upper caste and OBC votes on the issue. This created a fear among Muslims, who thought that the BJP could come to power and since the Congress was considered ‘weak’, they shifted en masse to the Samajwadi Party,” she reasoned.
She further said there were apprehensions in the minds of the Muslims that the upper castes and OBCs would not vote for the BSP and, hence, they voted for the SP. “The votes of upper caste Hindus got divided among many parties and the Samajwadi Party benefited from this,” she added.
Ms Mayawati apprehended that the new SP government would put her welfare programmes in cold storage and take the state backwards by many years.
“Very soon you will find that people of UP will get fed up with the functioning of the SP government and remember the good governance during the BSP rule,” she said.
She claimed that she had done maximum developmental work in UP despite the non-cooperative attitude of the Centre.
She said she would do work towards rejuvenating the party and would ensure that the people of other castes came into the BSP through their cadres so that no such debacle takes place in the future.