BSP supremo Mayawati on Friday attributed her party's dismal showing to the 'shift' of the Muslim votes to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and said that the Muslim community had committed a ''grave mistake'' by preferring the SP over the BSP.
''Muslim voters shifted their allegiance to the SP completely.....this shift hurt the prospects of the BSP,'' Mayawati told reporters here.
BSP could win only one seat in the polls while its vote percentage declined sharply from 21 per cent in the 2017 Assembly polls to 12 per cent in the 2022 elections.
#WATCH | "They (BJP) have been successful in misleading... that BSP is BJP's B-team... while the truth is opposite, BJP vs BSP war was not only political but principled & electoral as well," says BSP chief Mayawati pic.twitter.com/edwBuHWqvi
— ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) March 11, 2022
She said that the drubbing in the elections was a 'lesson' for the party and asked the party workers not to be 'disheartened' by the defeat and continue to carry forward the mission of the party.
The BSP supremo said that her party had been labelled as the 'B team' of the BJP. ''We became a victim of propaganda,'' she added.
Visibly disappointed by the results, Mayawati said that the results would have been different had the Muslims and Dalits supported her party.
The analysis of the results revealed that a section of the 'Jatavs', considered to be the core voters of the BSP, may have supported the BJP in the polls which was reflected in the increased vote percentage of the BJP.
Mayawati had gone solo in the polls and had put up a large number of Brahmin and Muslim candidates in the hope of getting the support of these communities, however, the results revealed that her strategy did not succeed.
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