LUCKNOW: Enthused by the party’s performance in the civic polls in which it snatched two mayoral seats from Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati thanked the sarv samaj for supporting her party candidates and blamed the BJP for misusing official machinery to win the elections.
“Had BJP not misused the official machinery, BSP could have won more mayoral seats,” she claimed.
Ms Mayawati visited Risaldar Park area in the state capital on Saturday morning to pay tributes to Buddhist monk Bhante Pragyanand.
Bhante Pragyanand, who came to India from Sri Lanka in 1942, died in Lucknow on November 30 following a prolonged illness. He was 90.
In her brief chat with the media, she said EVMs were the main culprit in the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in which her party lost most of the seats.
“I thank the sarv samaj for supporting BSP candidates in most of the places,” she added. When asked about possibility of a grand alliance to take on BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BSP president said, “We want an alliance of the sarv samaj where every community and caste are included.
We have an open mind for the alliance but it is up to other political parties to think over it.” The BSP drew blank in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and won just 19 seats in the Assembly elections early this year.
But in the civic polls the party won mayoral seats in Aligarh and Meerut besides faring well in the nagar palika and nagar panchayat polls.
Mayawati paid floral tributes to Bhante Pragyanand, who was among the seven bhikshu to have initiated Dr B R Ambedkar into Buddhism in Nagpur on October 14, 1956. Bhante used to live at Buddha Vihar in Risaldar Park area of the state capital, where Dr Ambedkar would visit him.
The last rites of the Buddhist monk would be held in Shravasti. (AGENCIES)
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