BSP won’t field ‘bahubalis’ in UP polls: Mayawati
LUCKNOW : Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Friday said her party will not field bahubalis (strongmen) or mafiosi in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly election.
Jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, the BSP’s sitting MLA will not be given the party ticket for his Mau assembly seat, she said.
Instead, BSP state unit president Bhim Rajbhar will be the party candidate from Mau in the assembly election due to be held early next year, she said.
In a series of tweets, Mayawati said the decision had been taken in order to fulfil the people’s expectations.
“I appeal to the party in-charge to take special care while selecting the party candidates so that if the government is formed, strict action will be taken against such elements. There is no problem in taking action against the gangsters,” she said.
The BSP’s resolve is to change the picture in UP by establishing the “rule of law by law” so that not only the people in the state or in the country, but every child says that if there is a government, it should be like the one led by Behenji (Mayawati) that works on the principle of “sarvajan hitay and sarvajan sukhay” (welfare of all communities) . The BSP also believes in doing what its leadership says. This is also the true identity of the BSP,” she said.
The BSP chief’s announcement comes after Mukhtar Ansari’s brother Sibghatullah Ansari joined the Samajwadi Party on August 28 while gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his wife Shaishta Praveen joined the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul- Muslimeen (AIMIM) led by Asaduddin Owaisi on Tuesday.
The BSP had contested the 2017 assembly election in alliance with the Quami Ekta Dal led by Mukhtar Ansari. While Sibghatullah lost from Mohammadabad in Ghazipur, Mukhtar Ansari won the Mau seat. Their brother Afzal Ansari won the Ghazipur Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 parliamentary election on the BSP ticket, defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Manoj Sinha, who is now the lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir.
Mukhtar Ansari had contested the 2009 Lok Sabha election from Varanasi as the BSP candidate against senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi.
Afzal contested on the BSP ticket from Ghazipur in the same election. Both the brothers lost. Later, Mayawati expelled the duo from the party in 2010.
Addressing a Brahmin conference in the party state unit office on Tuesday (September 7), Mayawati had announced that the BSP will establish the rule of law in Uttar Pradesh after forming the government in the state in 2022.
There would be no discrimination and exploitation on the basis of caste or creed, she said.
Speaking at the same conference, BSP national general secretary SC Mishra said Mayawati was committed to improving law and order in the state. When Mayawati was the Uttar
Pradesh chief minister (2007-12), she got the party’s sitting MP from Machchlishahar Umakant Yadav arrested from her official residence in 2008 on the charge of breaking the law and sent him to jail, he said.
SK Srivastava, a political observer, said by announcing that BSP would not give the party ticket to strongmen and mafiosi in the assembly election, Mayawati countered the BJP’s tirade against her party over promoting gangsters like Mukhtar Ansari while the BJP had launched a statewide drive against criminal gangs.
Even as the SP inducted Mukhtar’s brother into the party fold, Mayawati sent a message to the voters that the BSP stood for clean politics free of mafiaosi and gangsters, he said.