Lucknow:
Mayawati used her birthday speech to inform a massive crowd of supporters on the outskirts of Lucknow today that the Bahujan Samaj Party will contest the Lok Sabha elections alone this year.
The BSP chief was addressing what her party called the "Savdhan Vishal Maharally" dressed in a pink salwar kameez, brown jacket and her trademark diamond earrings. She turned 58 today.
Uttar Pradesh elects 80 parliamentarians, more than any other state. 21 of them are currently from the BSP, which provides external support to the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre.
The BSP chief said it was imperative that the BSP send the maximum number of legislators to the Lok Sabha this year.
She ruled out partnerships with the Congress or the BJP and accused those parties of plotting with the Samajwadi Party, which rules UP, to keep her, a Dalit woman, from rising. And exhorted her supporters to devise counter strategies to ensure those plans did not succeed.
"We have to unite all Dalits throughout the country. Then we have to get on board Muslims and upper castes. The BSP's policy has to be 'bhaichara' (brotherhood)," she said. The crowd roared in approval.
The extravagance of earlier birthday celebrations was missing today and the former UP chief minister underscored the difference. "If we had hired chairs for all of you, the expenditure would have been much more," she said.
But the Samajwadi Party alleged that one crore was spent on today's rally.
The BSP imputes the relatively sombre tone of this year's birthday to September's Hindu-Muslim violence in Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh. Nearly 60 people were killed and 40,000 forced to move into makeshift refugee camps after the worst riots in the state in nearly a decade.
The Samajwadi Party, which ousted Mayawati to form government in the state two years ago, has been severely censured for its handling of the Muzaffarnagar crisis.