Mayawati to campaign for a day in Gujarat tomorrow

LUCKNOW: After giving a second thought and following party’s success in the urban local bodies polls in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati would be campaigning for Gujarat polls for a day on Tuesday.
Ms Mayawati would be addressing a public meeting in Rajkot tomorrow at Ramesh Parekh Rangdarshan Maidan near Racecourse ground.
BSP is contesting in all the 182 assembly seats in Gujarat where polling is scheduled in two phases on December 9 and 14.
Ms Mayawati had earlier planned not to campaign in Gujarat. She had, in fact, asked party workers to reach Jaipur for a rally on December 1. Her Rajkot rally comes a day before the 62nd death anniversary of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar.
Ms Mayawati did not campaign in Himachal and sent close aide Satish Chandra Mishra.
But after the results of the UP’s urban local bodies polls, in which BSP snatched two sitting mayor seats from the ruling BJP, Ms Mayawati changed her strategy for Gujarat. In UP civic polls, Ms Mayawati neither campaigned nor voted but still BSP managed to get good results with support from the Dalits and Muslims.
Ms Mayawati, while addressing party workers here in Lucknow last month had said talks for alliance with Congress failed over seat sharing arrangement after which her party decided to contest all the seats.
The BSP president had said she is not averse to electoral tie-ups with like-minded parties to stop the juggernaut of the “BJP and other communal forces”, but the BSP will do so only if it is given a “respectable share”.
In Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, the Congress party, she claimed, was not even ready to part with some of the seats it has traditionally been losing. Mayawati said that under this mindset, no forward movement can take place on alliance issues.
The BSP supremo informed that although her close aide Satish Chandra Mishra and political advisor to Congress President Ahmad Patel held meetings for seat sharing in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat but nothing concrete emerged, forcing the BSP to abandon the efforts.
She said the situation is such that now Mr Mishra has even stopped mulling any such alliance efforts, adding that while in Gujarat the Congress had offered to give 25 of its lost seats of the total 182, in Himachal Pradesh, it offered 10 of the seats it lost from the total 68. (agencies)

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