Cong’s ‘casteist’ supporters won’t vote for us: Maya

At both venues, she attacked the Congress for being dominated by upper caste Manuwadi people and said the BSP decided to go it alone in the coming Lok Sabha polls after learning from past experiences.

She said the Congress had cheated the BSP in the past when there was an alliance between the two. She said in the 1996 Lok Sabha polls, when the BSP tied up with the Congress, results showed that while the BSP supporters voted for Congress nominees, upper-caste Congress supporters did not vote for the BSP.

She said the BSP, which secured 66 seats in those elections, could have won at least 100 seats more, had it contested the polls independently. She said ‘‘communal forces’’ in the country have gained strength because of the Manuwadi tendency among upper caste people in Congress.

Mayawati sought to lend credence to her claim of ‘‘not helping communal forces’’ by targeting the BJP similarly. ‘‘A thousand trained RSS saboteurs were sent to my Akbarpur constituency last time to ensure my defeat, but I won hands down,’’ she said. ‘‘The BJP’s feel-good is only on paper, we created it in UP when we were in government,’’ she said.

For all that she said, the BSP’s decision to contest on its own in all the 11 constituencies across Vidarbha, and elsewhere, will indirectly benefit the BJP and its allies.

Mayawati also appealed to Muslims and other religious minorities and other backward classes, ‘‘constituting 85 per cent’’, to form a ‘‘natural alliance that will give us the master key to political power at the Centre and in the states’’.