- Thursday, May 02, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
They were among India’s most discussed political rivals but Mayawati, supremo of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), on Monday (10) put the intense enmity behind to condole the death of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the founder of the Samajwadi Party (SP).
The BSP-SP fight has remained a high point of Uttar Pradesh politics over the years till the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister Narendra Modi and the current chief minister of the state, Yogi Adityanath, dwarfed them both in the 2010s and early 2020s.
In a tweet, the 66-year-old Mayawati, a Dalit leader, said the passing of Yadav, 82, was very disappointing and expressed her condolences to the latter’s family.
“Very sad news of the passing away of veteran Samajwadi Party leader and former Chief Minister of UP Shri Mulayam Singh Yadav ji today. My deepest condolences to his family and all well wishers. May nature give them all the strength to bear this sorrow,” she tweeted in Hindi.
समाजवादी पार्टी के व्योवृद्ध नेता व यूपी के पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री श्री मुलायम सिंह यादव जी के आज निधन हो जाने की ख़बर अति-दुःखद। उनके परिवार व सभी शुभचिन्तकों के प्रति मेरी गहरी संवेदना। कुदरत उन सबको इस दुःख को सहन करने की शक्ति दे।
— Mayawati (@Mayawati) October 10, 2022
The bitter rivalry between Mayawati’s BSP and Yadav’s SP had started with an alliance in the state elections held way back in 1993.
The polls were held in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh in December 1992 and the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations for reservation by India’s former VP Singh government.
In order to prevent the Hindu right-wing BJP from winning power. BSP founder Kanshi Ram and Singh formed an alliance. However, there were differences soon between the two parties and things took the worst turn in 1995 when a group of SP workers allegedly attacked a guesthouse where Mayawati was staying with some party lawmakers in Lucknow.
The same year, the BSP broke the alliance and Yadav’s government crumbled. Mayawati then became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh with the help of the BJP’s support.
The next two decades saw intense rivalry between the two leaders and their parties with the chief minister’s post almost regularly changing hands between them.
Things, however, started changing with the rise of Modi in the mid-2010s as the BJP defeated all other players in the state by some distance, the two state rivals came together for the general election in 2019. Mayawati even withdrew the case against Yadav over the 1995 attack on the guesthouse.
But the alliance could not prevent disaster for the two parties as the BJP swept Uttar Pradesh.
Mayawati then decided to contest elections alone. By then, the leadership of the SP had also gone into the hands of Akhilesh Yadav, the son of Mulayam.
