Out of BJP line of fire in UP fray, Mayawati faces its ‘B-team’ salvo from INDIA after Akash removal

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)’s supremo Mayawati has not been in the crosshairs of the ruling BJP in its campaign for the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.

This has been seen in the rallies of the key BJP campaigners – including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, national party president J P Nadda, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, and state party president Bhupendra Chaudhary – which they have been addressing across the state for several weeks.

These speeches by top BJP leaders have signalled that for them the Opposition camp involves only the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) and their leaders, especiallyRahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav.

In their rallies in UP so far, PM Modi, Shah and Adityanath have targeted Congress leaders – Sonia Gandhi, Rahul, Priyanka Gandhi and party chief Mallikarjun Kharge – as well as SP president Akhilesh Yadav for not attending the Ram Temple consecration ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22 and for not visiting the Temple since. However, none of them has criticised Mayawati in this regard so far.

In contrast, in their campaign in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls – when the SP and the BSP had forged a pre-poll alliance – the BJP’s star campaigners including PM Modi, Shah and Adityanath had coined phrases like “Bua-Babua” or “Bua-Bhatija” to go after the then allies Mayawati and Akhilesh.

The BJP camp then used to rake up allegations of “gundagardi” against the previous SP governments and corruption charges against the former BSP regime.

The outcome of the polls saw the BJP’s tally dipping to 62 seats (out of the state’s 80 seats) from 71 in 2014. The BSP won 10 seats and the SP five. Mayawati