Is the Rampur bypoll win not a result of collusion between BJP and SP, Mayawati said in a tweet. (File)
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Sunday attributed the defeat of the Samajwadi Party in the recent Rampur bypoll to "planned low voting", wondering whether there was a collusion between the SP and the BJP.
The BJP for the first time won from SP leader Azam Khan's bastion Rampur, which he represented before he was disqualified after his conviction in a hate speech case.
In a tweet in Hindi, Mayawati said, "The SP won the bypolls held on Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, but it lost for the first time on the seat held by Azam Khan in the assembly by-election due to planned low voting. Is it not a result of the internal collusion between the BJP and the SP?"
In another tweet, she said, "The Muslim community needs to think and understand this so that in the upcoming elections, it can save itself from getting cheated. There is a lot of suspicion over the defeat of the BJP in the Khatauli assembly bypolls, and this is also a matter to think about."
Reacting to her statement, BJP's newly elected MLA from Rampur Akash Saxena said, "In the Lok Sabha bypolls held in Rampur, the voting percentage was 31.5 per cent, and in the recent assembly by-elections held in Rampur, the voting percentage was 35. So, it is wrong to say that there has been a low voter turnout in the by-election. The polling percentage (in the assembly bypolls) has increased by 3.5 points compared to the Lok Sabha bypolls."
UP BJP spokesperson Hero Bajpai rebutted the tweets of the BSP chief and told PTI, "This is simply a figment of her imagination. She is saying all this since the BSP is not contesting the elections, nor it is entering the poll fray. And, I feel that in the upcoming urban local bodies elections and in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, if she continues to watch the match from outside the field, then she will continue to make such baseless remarks."
Samajwadi Party MLC Ashutosh Sinha told PTI, "The BSP is working as a B-team of the BJP, and in every election, it makes an effort to transfer its vote to the BJP. However, this did not materialise in these bypolls, and the people rejected the BSP after knowing about its intention."
In the recently-concluded by-elections, the Samajwadi Party retained the high-profile Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, while the BJP wrested the Rampur Sadar assembly seat from it.
The ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh, however, lost Khatauli to Samajwadi Party ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
Dimple Yadav, the wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, defeated her nearest rival and BJP candidate Raghuraj Singh Shakya by 2,88,461 votes in Mainpuri, a pocket borough of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav's family.
The win provided some solace to Akhilesh Yadav after the defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early this year and the loss of Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in the bypolls in June.
Samajwadi Party's ally Rashtriya Lok Dal's Madan Bhaiya defeated his BJP rival Rajkumari Saini by a margin of over 22,000 votes in Khatauli. Saini is the wife of former BJP MLA Vikram Singh whose disqualification from the state assembly following his conviction in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case necessitated the by-election.
Madan Bhaiya polled 97,071 votes, while Saini received 74,996, according to the Election Commission.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)