IndiaPost.com - Mayawati says she always kept BJP on tenterhooks

NEW DELHI: Apparently sending a strong signal to the minorities, UP Chief Minister Mayawati has said that despite sharing power with the BJP three times, she always kept the saffron party on tenterhooks.

"I feel that the BJP leadership will have always regretted and repented that Mayawati never allowed imposition of its thought and ideology over her government despite taking support from them", she said.

The BJP leadership might be feeling that "I cared two hoots for them and kept them on tenterhooks", the BSP supremo says in her autobiographical book using the phrase in Hindi "Juti ke nok per he rakha".

Recalling that the first alliance effected by the BSP was with the Samajwadi Party in the 1993 Uttar Pradesh elections, she says that it shows that it was an anti-BJP alliance and aimed at "forcing the saffron party to disembark from the Rath to Ayodhya".

In the 1000-page book written in Hindi titled "Mere Sangharshmay jeevan aevam BSP movement ka safarnama", the U P Chief Minister says that "we were completely successful in our strategy".

She says at that time it was essential for the BSP to make timely change in its strategy by aligning with the SP to show an aggressive BJP "its proper place".

While the Congress had been already "angry" with the BSP for ensuring its marginalization in the politically key state, the BJP too adopted a similar attitude, she says. The saffron forces were angry because they were unable to make any dent despite forging post-poll alliances with the BSP, she points out.

Mayawati's remarks have come at a time when her party is attempting to make inroads into various states outside Uttar Pradesh in a big way including states known as the bastions of the BJP as also Congress. In the book, the BSP supremo has made it known that she would like to become the first Prime Minister from the oppressed class.

Her party has also made it clear that it would not go in for alliances with any party in the Assembly polls as also in the Lok Sabha elections. There have been growing strains between the BSP and Congress in recent days with both of them losing no opportunity to take potshots at the other.

The book gives her side of the story of the developments between early 2006 and the recent UP assembly polls which Mayawati has described as the "most difficult phase" for the BSP movement.

In the book, she also reveals that the BJP had promised her support in 2003 for a full five-year term if she had agreed for an alliance with the saffron party in the Lok Sabha polls, which it wanted to advance. The BJP also wanted 60 of the 80 seats in the state as part of the tie-up.