Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Saturday announced its first list of 53 candidates for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. These are among the 58 seats going for polls in the first phase of UP assembly elections.
BSP has posed a tough challenge before the opposition grand alliance of Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) by giving 13 tickets to Muslims in west UP. While announcing the first, BSP chief Mayawati said that the candidates for the remaining five seats of the first phase would be announced in a day or two.
On the occasion of her birthday on Saturday, while addressing a press conference, the BSP supremo said that her party would come to power again.
In the 2017 assembly polls, BSP could win only 19 of 403 seats in UP while the SP-Congress alliance had won 54. On Saturday Mayawati released a booklet containing her achievement while being in power in UP between 2007-2012.
It may be mentioned that BJP and SP have been contesting UP assembly polls this time with their alliance partners while congress and BSP would go alone.
In the recent few months, BSP has faced severe crisis within the party with most of its sitting legislators and leaders deserting it.
In the 2019 parliament elections, BSP had forged an alliance with SP and won 10 seats. However, soon after the elections, she broke the alliance saying it had not helped her party. To repeat the success of the 2007 assembly polls when BSP had formed government in UP on its own, Mayawati is again trying to woo Brahmin voters and has entrusted her national general secretary S.C. Mishra on the task.
