Mayawati storms UP; set to form govt

Lucknow, May 11: Wooing the upper castes on her side, mercurial Mayawati powered the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to a stunning victory in Uttar Pradesh, crushing both the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, to take over as Chief Minister for a fourth time.

As the curtains were coming down on the assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, the BSP appeared close to attaining a razor-thin majority in the 403-member state assembly to end an era of political instability in the state.

The BSP proved all poll analysts and its political opponents wrong as the social engineering formula worked out by Ms Mayawati by stitching a Dalit-Muslim-Brahmin alliance swept the state, dislodging the Mulayam Singh Yadav regime and reducing the BJP to being a minor player in the state politics.

A shocked Mr Yadav conceded defeat and submitted his resignation to Governor T V Rajeshwar. The BSP Legislature Party will meet tomorrow to formally elect Ms Mayawati as its leader, who will then stake her claim to form a government.

So strong was the wave in favour of Ms Mayawati's party, which contested the poll on the plank of ending the 'jungle raj' in the state, that even political analysts were compelled to say her 'elephant' (BSP's election symbol) had trampled Mulayam Singh Yadav's 'cycle' (SP's election symbol).

The BJP performed much below its own expectations suffering humiliating defeats in some of its own bastions, once again making the party to realise that it still has a long way to go in retrieving its vote bank in the state. The party's poor showing is being seen as a personal setback for BJP President Rajnath Singh, who hails from the state, just at a time when he was basking in the glory of its triumph in the assembly elections in Uttarakhand and Punjab and the municipal polls in Mumbai and Delhi and gearing up his cadre for the upcoming Goa assembly polls.

The SP's humiliation was so grave that many of the party's stalwarts were on the brink of losing the poll.

Despite hectic campaigning by party president Sonia Gandhi and her children, the Congress, which obviously was not a key player in the poll arena, was trying hard to hold on to its feeble vote bank in the state.

The immediate impact of the UP election outcome would be on the upcoming Presidential poll in which the BSP is now bound to play a decisive role in choosing the new occupant of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

UNI

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