On her birthday, Mayawati dashes INDIA bloc’s hopes, says BSP will contest 2024 general election alone

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, January 15

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Monday said the party would go solo in the 2024 general election and that she had no plans to retire from politics though she had announced nephew Akash Anand as her political heir.

Addressing a press conference on her 68th birthday in Lucknow, Mayawati dashed the hopes of the Congress which had made overtures to the veteran Dalit leader to join the anti-BJP INDIA alliance.

Mayawati on Monday effectively snubbed the offer, leaving room open for some formidable non-BJP and non-Congress parties to contest alone. That would create a sort of third front which the principal opposition party Congress has been guarding against.

Two recent major conclaves of the Congress — CWC meeting in Telangana and AICC plenary in Raipur — had pledged to work for consolidation of secular like-minded forces to prevent the formation of a third front, which, it said, would help the BJP.

In Uttar Pradesh, a solo run of the BSP would pose a challenge to both SP and Congress.

The BSP which had contested the 2019 general election in alliance with the SP had won 10 seats while the SP had won just five.

UP has 80 Lok Sabha seats, the highest in India.

Mayawati said she would continue to work for the party till her last breath.

She also criticised Rahul Gandhi’s ongoing Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, also noting that the BSP is concerned about reports of potential vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines.