Having suffered a major setback in the Lok Sabha elections, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati noted that the Muslims did not support party candidates in Uttar Pradesh even though they were given proper representation.

Against this backdrop, she said the party would give them (the Muslims) a chance in the future only after careful consideration.

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In her reaction to the electoral losses her party suffered, Mayawati said, “We will analyse it deeply and will continue to work for crores of poor, Dalits, exploited, tribals, backward and religious minorities of the country so that the threat looming on their security and dignity ends.”

On the two-and-a-half month-long election programme, she said, “Our party believed from the very beginning that elections should not be too long. It should be completed in three to four phases only.”

She pointed out that the enthusiasm of the people was also affected by the extreme heat of the peak summer resulting in low voter turnout. “In such a situation, it is expected that in view of the larger interest of democracy and the general public, these special problems of the people will definitely be kept in mind by the Election Commission while conducting future elections,” she added.

The most depressing performance in the Lok Sabha polls was that of the BSP as it drew blank with polling barely 9.30 per cent of votes from all the 80 seats in the state it contested this time. Almost all its candidates lost their deposits.

In the 2019 polls, the BSP won 10 seats with 19.43 per cent of votes while in the 2014 polls, it got 19.60 per cent of votes but could not win a single seat.

This election has also sprung a surprise for UP with the emergence of a new alternative Dalit leader against Mayawati. It’s Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) founder chief Chandrashekhar who won from the Nagina seat, where the BSP candidate got a measly number of 5,000-odd votes.