BJP woman leader attacked
The Kasba mandal president of BJP’s South Kolkata organisational district, Saraswati Sarkar, was allegedly attacked and hit on her head by some miscreants on Saturday night.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of misusing government machinery and creating an atmosphere of fear to defeat the BSP candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections.
“BJP used everything in its power, misused its machinery and used unconstitutional methods to break the recent closeness between SP and BSP,” Mayawati told the media on Saturday.
Claiming that the lone BSP candidate, Bhim Rao Ambedkar, was defeated through conspiracy, Mayawati said that people are aware of the methods used by the BJP government at the Centre and the state to ensure their victory in the elections.
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“People are of the opinion that PM Modi and CM Yogi Adityanath have misused the machinery and created an atmosphere of fear to make their candidate win the elections. BSP shares the same view,” she said.
Mayawati added that some legislators were forced to cross vote through threats to save themselves from the state machinery.
“Only one BSP candidate betrayed us for material gains. Our party has suspended him,” said the 62-year-old former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in reference to BSP MLA Anil Singh who had claimed yesterday that he cross voted for the BJP.
The BJP on Friday won nine of the 10 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. While the party had the numbers to confidently win eight seats, it triggered a contest by nominating a ninth candidate, Anil Agarwal.
While Samajwadi Party candidate Jaya Bachchan won the only seat for which the party was contesting, BSP needed the backing of surplus votes from Akhilesh Yadav’s party, the Congress and the Independents besides her own to send its candidate to the upper house.
Following BJP’s win, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took a dig at the SP-BSP bonhomie blaming BSP’s loss on the SP’s “opportunism” as it failed to transfer votes.
But Mayawati claimed that the loss has strengthened the resolve of both BSP and SP to defeat BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
“From now on my party, and I believe SP too, will work harder to defeat BJP candidates in 2019,” she said.
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