BSP to contest alone in Assembly, Lok Sabha polls: Mayawati

Attempts to forge an alliance of the opposition parties to take on the BJP in the forthcoming Assembly polls in many states, including Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana as well as in the next year's Lok Sabha polls, suffered a setback after BSP supremo Mayawati on Sunday declared that her party would go solo
in these elections.

''Our party will not have any alliance in the forthcoming Assembly elections in some states and in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and will contest them on its own,'' Mayawati told reporters here on her 67th birthday.

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She said that the decision to go it alone in the polls had been taken keeping in view the 'experiences' of the past alliances. ''It has been our experience that our party's votes are transferred to the alliance partners but their votes were not transferred as a result of which we suffered losses,'' Maaywati said.

The BSP supremo said that it had become necessary for her to make her party's position clear as Congress and some other parties had been spreading misinformation that the BSP would ally with them in the forthcoming polls.

Mayawati also demanded that ballot papers should be used in the polls instead of the EVMs. ''Questions have been raised on EVMs in the past......we want ballot papers to be used,'' she said.

The BSP supremo also made it clear that her party's doors would remain closed for the deserters. ''There is no question of taking the deserters back,'' she added.

BSP had also remained away from former Congress president Rahul Gandhi's ongoing 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' in the state. The Samajwadi Party (SP) had also not joined the yatra though its alliance partner Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) had taken part in the same.