National

Efforts made to manage, manipulate civic polls: Mayawati

Lucknow, (thestates.news)| Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Thursday accused Bharatiya Janata Party of misusing the government machinery in the recently concluded civic elections in Uttar Pradesh and said attempts were made to manage and manipulate the polls.

While addressing a meeting of party office-bearers here, Mayawati said, “BJP misused the government machinery in the recently concluded municipal elections in Uttar Pradesh. Whatever the ruling party may claim, but the reality is that right from the beginning till the end, every attempt was made to manage and manipulate the election, including reservation for the OBCs and women seats.”

She said despite this except the mayoral election the people did not allow BJP to succeed in its tactics. “If the mayoral election would have been held through ballot paper instead of the electronic voting machines (EVM), then the picture of the poll result would have been definitely different. People also did not like the negative politics of Samajwadi Party (SP), especially in the mayoral elections in Agra and Saharanpur, where BSP was defeated due to nefarious conspiracy,” she said.

The BSP supremo said BJP and SP used every tactic in the book in UP, which is a victim of casteism and communalism. “The complaints of malice and repression at every level of the government machinery and errors in the voter lists were common which affected the just concluded civic polls in UP to a large extent,” she said.

She said the common tendency of people suffering from inflation, poverty, unemployment, wrong government policies and activities not converting in the form of votes is very sad and very worrying for the future of democracy.

Mayawati said collective effort to change the prevailing situation in view of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections needs to be given more speed and it needs to be intensified from village to village. “Crores of people of UP want change for their betterment and bright future of their families by removing their poverty, despair and backwardness of the state, and in such a situation, BSP will have to come forward as a right and meaningful alternative for the change of power. For this there is a dire need for all the people to work together with full strength,” she said.

To protect democracy in the country and for the respect of the Constitution, she emphasised on increasing the maximum awareness of voters and public participation and demanded the Election Commission to check misuse of government machinery and increasing influence of religion in politics against the Constitution and law effectively.

The BSP supremo directed the party office-bearers to encourage hardworking, honest and missionary people at the grassroots level. She said the situation remained slightly different due to mutual factionalism, enmity and estrangement among the people during in the civic elections which should be taken into account.

She said keeping this in mind, there is a need to take further action to strengthen the organisation. She strictly directed the party workers not to take law into their hands in such circumstances and said increasing the mass base of the party is a continuous process, for which collective efforts should be made with full zeal and enthusiasm. (UNI)