BSP, SP try to link each other with BJP

LUCKNOW: After citing the ongoing tussle in the Yadav clan, BSP chief Mayawati is now learnt to have asked her party ranks to establish SP's close nexus with the BJP, especially to the Muslim voters. Monday onwards, BSP's Muslim members will convene a special meeting in the communally sensitive district of Muzaffarnagar which witnessed a communal conflagration before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.A senior BSP functionary told TOI that the meeting will focus on SP's past association with the BJP. Sources said similar meetings have also been lined up in Hapur and Bareilly soon after the one in Muzaffarnagar
Party sources said such meetings will be organised subsequently in all districts of the state. Maya's desperate bid to 'expose' SP's past association with the BJP, party sources said, is one of the major moves to consolidate Muslim vote bank ahead of UP assembly elections due in few months.
The BSP brass, sources said, has prepared a dossier containing details of SP's past association with the BJP and how the former tried to help the saffron outfit in the Bihar assembly elections by pulling out a grand alliance of JD(U)-RJD and Congress. In fact, BSP national general secretary, Naseemuddin Siddiqui, went on to accuse the SP and its chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as have genesis in the Jan Sangh, the political arm of the RSS.
Maya's plan to 'expose' SP-BJP association comes close on the heels of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav's recent attack on BSP supremo recalling her two BJP supported tenures. Akhilesh had not only rattled Mayawati with his 'rakhi' barb (Mayawati had tied rakhi on BJP leader and former MP Lalji Tandon) but has also pointed a possibility of Mayawati joining hands with the BJP for her political survival.
Political experts said SP and BSP's attempt to associate BJP with each other is ostensibly an attempt to prevent the crucial Muslim vote bank from getting divided. Political commentator JP Shukla pointed out that though the two key political opponents may position squarely against the BJP, they will still be offering covert support to the Congress so as not to antagonise the minorities and Dalits. "After all, both had given outside support to the Congress during the previous UPA regime," cited Shukla.