Mulayam woos Maya, makes last ditch effort to stop BJP in UP

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo has shot down her arch-rival Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's proposal to join hands in Uttar Pradesh to challenge the BJP. This sudden change of guard shows that Mulayam has realised his party is unable to take on surging BJP alone in the Hindi heartland.

Mulayam took lesson from Bihar?

Seems taking a lesson from Bihar, where once rivals Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar left behind their two-decade long rivalry and allied with each other to face one common foe i.e. BJP, Mulayam too had reached out to Mayawati. Even Lalu, after announcing his alliance with Nitish Kumar, had recently asked SP and BSP to join hands in upcoming by-polls to defeat the BJP.

Maya wants to capitalise over SP's credibility loss in UP

Mulayam Singh, whose party is in power in UP, with his latest move has sparked a debate in the political arena if his party has lost ground in the state forcing it to consider inching closer towards rival BSP.

Well, SP has certainly witnessed a huge dip in its voter base. There is a prevalent anti-incumbency wave against the ruling party due to the Akhilesh Yadav government's failure to improve law and order, rampant corruption and spate of communal violence in the state. The party had suffered its side-effects in the Lok Sabha polls when it managed to win just five of the total 80 parliamentary seats in the state. BJP and ally Apna Dal bagged 73 seats from the state, all thanks to the Modi-wave.

This perhaps had compelled the party to join hands with to inch closer towards BSP. Experts are of the view that Mulayam was simply testing waters by throwing this bait. The former UP CM was just trying to test Mayawati's reaction over the same.

Why Maya dumped Mulayam's offer?

Like Mulayam her rival Maya is also faced decimation at BJP's hands. Party's performance in the LS polls was even worse than SP, as it failed to bag even a single parliamentary seat from the state.

Maya fears joining hands with the SP would further deplete her already hit vote bank which boycotted the party n went with the BJP. The four-time UP CM wants to woo Muslim voters, who are presently miffed with Akhilesh Yadav, and joining hands with the SP will just be the opposite.

Also, taking lesson from the increasing political confusion in Bihar, where people are in dilemma whether to go with the 'grand alliance' between RJD-JD(U)-Congress or with the popular BJP wave.

Mayawati has made her intention very clear that currently she wants to sweep SP's vote bank, which is its biggest threat, and later take on BJP in 2017 assembly polls.