LUCKNOW: In her first reaction on the Lok Sabha election results,
Bahujan Samaj Party
chief
Mayawati
on Wednesday thanked
Jatavs
, her party’s core voters, despite her party failing to win a singe seat in Uttar Pradesh. She also said
BSP
could not convince
Muslims
despite giving tickets to many members of the community.
“People from my caste voted mostly for BSP and I am grateful to them,” she said.
She also expressed disappointment over Muslim voters not voting for BSP. “From now, BSP will field Muslims in elections only after thorough deliberations to avoid the massive damage that the party suffered this time,” she said.
She said that Muslims failed to identify with BSP yet again, despite the party giving them appropriate representation (in ticket distribution). “As it was this time and also in previous elections, Muslims could not identify with the party even after they were given appropriate representation,” she said.
“Our party has taken the result seriously. We will assess our performance and take strict action in favour of the party and the movement,” said Mayawati.
BSP had contested 79 seats in UP and fielded Muslims on 20 seats. But Muslim candidates of only five seats, Amroha, Sambhal, Sant Kabir Nagar, Azamgarh and Ambedkarnagar, could get more than 1.5 lakh votes. Qamar Hayat Ansari in Ambedkarnagar was the party’s highest scorer with 1.9 lakh votes.
The rest of the candidates could not get even one lakh votes but lost with a huge margin of over 2-5 lakh votes.
Sources said that Behenji has entrusted national general secretary SC Mishra the task to assess the reasons for the failure and submit a report. “The party’s loss in west UP will be looked into especially,” she said.
BSP had won Saharanpur, Nagina (SC), Amroha and Bijnor seats in west UP in 2019. Ghosi, Ghazipur, Lalganj (SC) and Jaunpur were the seats in Purvanchal that BSP won in 2019. Ambedkarnagar and Shravasti were the other seats won by the party.
The candidates that the party fielded this time finished third in most of the seats, with a few trailing on fourth position. The party’s vote share also dropped to 9.3% from 19.4% in 2019 LS elections and 12.8% in 2022 state assembly elections.
The performance of the party in states other than UP will also be assessed, said sources. BSP fielded candidates in at least 20 other states.
Mayawati said her party had asked the election commission not to prolong elections for about two-and-a-half months. “Weather affected the enthusiasm of voters and turnout was low this time,” she said.
“It was already discussed that if elections were free and fair and there were no glitches in the EVMs, results would be shocking,” added the BSP chief.
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