SP, BSP blame BJP for their poor showing in municipal polls

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati may be at war with each other, but when it comes to losing elections, they join hands to blame the BJP for their poor performance.

After losing the municipal elections, Akhilesh Yadav said: "They (BJP) tried every trick to influence elections but nothing worked in their favour. The BJP faced a humiliating defeat in elections held for posts other than that of mayors and corporators."

The SP also attacked the BJP, alleging that it had a role in slow pace of counting in Mainpuri and a number of other places.

The party said it was yet to be confirmed if the counting was slow due to technical issues or was "slowed down for other reasons."

"The BJP did everything they could to influence counting process and win elections. They got counting process slowed down. At one place, the total number of votes counted turned out to be more than the total number of votes polled," he said.

Mayawati, meanwhile, said that the elections were not fair.

BSP did not win even a single mayoral seat out of the 17.

The party, in fact, lost two seats, Aligarh and Meerut, that it had won in the 2017 local urban polls.

This time, the BJP has won all the mayoral seats in the state.

The BSP had fielded 11 Muslim candidates in the elections and on the remaining seats, it had banked on old guards. However, the strategy did not work for the party.

Mayawati has now hit out at the state's BJP government for misusing the official machinery and rigging the elections.

"It would have been a completely different picture if the elections were conducted fairly. If it was through a ballot paper, BSP would have also won a mayoral seat," she said, adding that her party will not sit quietly and give a befitting reply to the BJP when the time comes.

She said that both the BJP and the SP use similar tactics to win local elections.