‘BSP to contest UP and Uttarakhand assembly elections alone’

Lucknow, Jun 27 (PTI):
The BSP will not enter into any alliance for Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand assembly polls, party chief Mayawati said on Sunday.
In a series of tweets in Hindi, the former chief minister categorically denied any tie-up with the AIMIM for the assembly election in Uttar Pradesh due next year.
“A news channel is broadcasting news that in the upcoming UP Assembly elections, BSP will contest along with (Asaduddin) Owaisi’s party AIMIM.
This news is completely wrong, misleading and devoid of any fact. There is not even an iota of truth in this. The BSP vociferously denies this.
“The party wants to clarify that barring Punjab, the BSP will be contesting the Assembly elections to be held in UP and Uttarakhand alone, and will not be entering into any alliance with anyone,” Mayawati said in another tweet. The BSP has recently joined hands with the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab. Mayawati said that BSP general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Satish Chandra Misra has been made the national co-ordinator of the party’s media cell.
She also appealed to the media to consult Misra before publishing any news regarding the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) or its national president.
Mayawati, 65, is a four-time former chief minister of UP.
Her party had tied up with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) and RLD in Uttar Pradesh for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. BSP had won 10 seats while SP had bagged five out of 80 Lok Sabha seats.
Earlier, as agreed in Punjab between BSP and SAD, both parties have also decided on seat-sharing. The BSP will fight on 20 of 117 Punjab assembly seats, while SAD will contest assembly elections on 97 seats.
Among the seats which the BSP will contest are Kartarpur Sahib in Jalandhar, Jalandhar-West, Jalandhar-North, Phagwara, Hoshiarpur Urban, Dasuya, Chamkaur Sahib in Rupnagar district, Bassi Pathana, Sujanpur in Pathankot, Mohali, Amritsar North and Amritsar Central.
SAD was the oldest ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the two parties have shared power in Punjab and at the Centre for several terms. Last year, SAD had quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over the three contentious farm bills.