Casteist and communal parties having sleepless nights: Mayawati

Lucknow: Mayawati, the supremo of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), has claimed that “casteist” and “communal” parties are having sleepless nights ahead of the Uttar Pradesh urban local body polls, following her party’s decision to give adequate representation to the Muslim community.

The BSP has fielded 11 Muslim candidates for 11 out of the 17 mayoral seats, a strategy that is being perceived as an attempt to divide the Samajwadi Party’s (SP) traditional Muslim-Yadav vote bank.

In a tweet in Hindi, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said: “Politics has heated up here due to the BSP giving a proper representation to the Muslim community in the elections for the mayors’ posts in 17 municipal corporations. Casteist and communal parties are having sleepless nights due to this.” Mayawati further added: “The BSP is an Ambedkarwadi (Ambedkarite) party that follows the policy and principle of ‘sarvajan hitay’ and ‘sarvajan sukhay’ and has formed its government in Uttar Pradesh four times on that basis. It always gave proper representation to Muslims and other communities. Therefore, I appeal to people to pay more attention to their own interests and not to the conspiracies of our rivals.”

The urban local body polls are scheduled to be held on May 4 and May 11, and the counting of votes will take place on May 13.