Mayawati discusses 'friendship' with SP, new anti-BJP strategy with BSP coordinators,

Clearly indicating that her "friendship" with the Samajwadi Party would continue, BSP president Mayawati today met the party's coordinators to apprise them of "new strategy" to defeat the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, party leaders said.

The BSP chief told senior party leaders in a closed door meeting that they must work wholeheartedly to defeat the BJP in the parliamentary elections barely a year away.

Stressing the necessity for an alliance or an understanding in the present political scenario, she asked party leaders to foil the BJP's efforts to drive a wedge in the new found equation with the SP, a party insider said after the meeting.

The BSP chief directed the coordinators not to be disheartened with the defeat in the Rajya Sabha elections and said the BJP's defeat in the key Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur had made the saffron party nervous.

She also thanked party workers who had worked to ensure the BJP's defeat in the by-elections in the two constituencies, the insider said.

Mayawati indicated that the BSP's future strategy would be chalked out after a final decision on an alliance but asked the party's leaders to continue their efforts to defeat the BJP by highlighting the shortcomings of both the Centre and the state government.

According to party insiders, she asked leaders for feedback on how opposition parties felt about firming up an alliance against the BJP.

"The BSP's close ties with the Samajwadi Party are not for any selfish motive but in the national interest," she told the media earlier in the day, emphasising that opposition parties will have to work jointly to stop the BJP from coming to power at the Centre.

She said non-BJP parties should come together to address the problems of common people, including the poor and the youth, because of the "wrong policies of the BJP-led central and state governments".

The BSP-SP friendship is being welcomed all over the country, she said, adding that the workers of the two parties would not fall prey to the BJP's designs.

"Since the BJP is now finding this (tie-up) taking shape, their leaders are issuing unfounded statements against the BSP-SP relationship," she said, days after the "understanding" between the two arch rivals came in for sharp criticism from the saffron party, which lost Gorakhpur and Phulpur to the SP.

The BSP supremo also referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks on dalit icon and chairman of the Constitution-drafting committee, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, in his 'Man ki Baat' programme yesterday and termed it an "eyewash."