BJP may go for early LS polls after defeat: Maya
CHANDIGARH: Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) chief Mayawati said on Thursday the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would announce early Lok Sabha elections as it was having sleepless nights in the wake of Uttar Pradesh bypoll results.
The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, who was in Chandigarh to address a rally to pay homage to BSP founder late Kanshi Ram on his birth anniversary, asked her party workers and supporters to gear up for an early poll.
Party supporters from Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh had gathered for the rally.
She said though both the BJP and the Congress were making claims of doing a lot for Dalits, the reality was something else. The Centre was trying to stop reservations in jobs by promoting privatisation, she said.
“The BSP will attract likeminded political parties to counter the Modi wave. We successfully supported the Samajwadi Party in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur constituencies to defeat the BJP,” she said.
“The BJP and the RSS are spreading the Hindutva agenda and the situation in the country is worse than the emergency in 1975,” the former UP CM said.
She also accused the BJP of tampering with electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 assembly elections.
The BJP, she said, was giving patronage to people like Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, who looted public sector banks and fled the country. ‘Karimpuri disappointed me’ Mayawati said former BSP Punjab president Avtar Singh Karimpuri disappointed her as he failed to make the party cadre strong in the state and Himachal Pradesh.
“I made him Rajya Sabha member from UP but he failed to perform. I even sent him to HP as in-charge for the recent assembly poll but he failed again. I will not give him any responsibility now,” she said.
Karimpuri was also present on the stage when she was making the remarks.