Mayawati backs Congress with eye on UP elections

In a calculated move with her eyes clearly set on next year’s Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, BSP supremo Mayawati supported the Congress in the crucial trial of strength in the Uttarakhand Assembly Tuesday. With her two MLAs, the BSP chief virtually played the role of kingmaker, aware that in order to dethrone the Samajwadi Party, led by self-styled “Muslims’ messiah” Mulayam Singh Yadav, she needs the support of a huge chunk of the state’s 18.5 Muslim voters. By backing the Congress, she signalled she was making all-out efforts to stop the “communal BJP”.

The BJP had tried to confuse the scenario by extending support to BSP candidates in the coming Hardwar panchayat polls.

The Samajwadi Party had earlier been claiming that Ms Maywati was “not averse to doing business” with the BJP. Sources said Ms Mayawati, who was expanding her social engineering rainbow, doesn’t want the Muslim vote split between the SP, BSP and Congress. Ms Mayawati, who was wiped out from the state in the last general election, is now rapidly but quietly trying to consolidate her dalit and Muslim votebank.

There is a widespread feeling across UP that Muslims are now abandoing the SP and moving towards the BSP. A senior SP leader admitted the party “seems to have lost the confidence of Muslim voters”. The BSP chief, aware of this, is in no mood to let this opportunity go.

“Ms Mayawati also knows the BJP successfully confused Muslim voters in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The Muslim vote had split three ways between the Samajwadi Party, BSP and Congress. She is trying to prevent that,” a senior BSP leader said. The BSP supremo justified her support to the Congress by saying she was doing this to stop communal forces from coming to power in Uttarakhand.

Ms Mayawati, sources said, has asked trusted lieutenants like Munkad Ali and Naseemuddin Siddiqui to campaign among Muslims and drive home the point that the division of their votes had allowed the BJP to win 73 out UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.