Mayawati holds review meet weeks after BSP won just 1 seat in UP

Days after a shock setback in the state elections in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati held a review meeting on Sunday at the party office in Lucknow that was attended by a large number of BSP leaders, news agency ANI reported. Mayawati’s party managed to get just one of 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh this time.

Umashankar Singh Balla will be the party’s only representative in the state assembly this time. “The meeting has been called to discuss the performance of the party in 2022 Assembly elections. In the previous elections in 2017 too, though we attained a lesser number of seats, we had 1.9 per cent more votes than Samajwadi Party,” news agency ANI quoted him as saying.

As the BJP was voted to power with a majority earlier this month, she had clarified that her party is not the ruling party’s “team B” as claimed by critics. Attacking Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, she said the SP had a deal with BJP: “SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav had openly met BJP leaders during the swearing-in ceremony organised after the 2017 assembly elections. Now, he has sent a family member to the BJP to get his work done. It’s a well-known fact.”

Akhilesh Yadav will be leading the opposition’s charge in the state assembly after quitting his Lok Sabha seat.

Mayawati had a muted campaign in this season of election season. Her party managed to get a vote share of 12.88 per cent.

While Akhilesh Yadav’s party managed to claim a voting percentage of 32 per cent, the BJP’s vote share percentage was 41 per cent. The party got 273 seats along with its allies.

After Yogi Adityanath took oath for a second term on Friday, Mayawati wrote in a tweet: “In UP, congratulations to BJP for taking oath for a new government. The government should work on constitutional and democratic principles.”

(With inputs from ANI)