Mayawati Open To Help From Anti-BJP Parties. Akhilesh Says Good Idea

Lucknow: A loud campaign around fears that the Electronic Voting Machines could be manipulated had put Ms Mayawati and her bitter rival Akhilesh Yadav on the same side of the EVM debate. There may be something else that the two leaders agree on: a grand alliance.

In less than 24 hours after Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati told her supporters that the party was ready to work with other parties "to save democracy", her rival, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has welcomed the offer. "There should be a grand alliance. We are in favour of it," Mr Yadav said on Saturday.

Agreed Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress that is already in alliance with the SP. "It is good thinking," he said.

The 43-year-old former chief minister from SP recalled he was the first to suggest an alliance with Ms Mayawati's BSP before even the exit poll results (that either gave the majority to the BJP, or suggested it would be largest party) were out.

But before the welcome message to Ms Mayawati, he mounted an attack on the EVMs, and the BJP. "I would say the way lies that are being peddled in the country, the way government was formed in UP by cheating, there should be some way out politically... it could be a front or an alliance," he said, adding that the SP had always been open to such ideas.

Samajwadi Party leaders in Uttar Pradesh were among the first to back the BSP chief when she first spoke about doubts that EVMs, and not just voters, may have voted for the BJP that ended up with 325 seats in the 403-seat assembly. The SP, which had hoped to come back to power with its alliance with the Congress, was able to win just 47 seats, the BSP another 19 and the Congress, just 7.

It is not clear if the two bitter rivals have been in touch since then.

But just a day earlier, Ms Mayawati, 61, made it clear to her supporters that "if other non-BJP parties want to come with us in the ongoing struggle against tampering of EVMs, now we will not have an objection.

She went on to explain why. "Because democracy (which was under threat due to tampered EVMs) comes first. If democracy does not survive, the right to vote that Baba Bhimrao Ambedkar gave you, will not have a meaning," she said.

But an upbeat BJP - which said its victory in UP had dispelled the myth that the BJP could only defeat the Congress and not wrest power from regional parties - suggested it wasn't losing sleep over the possibility of an alliance between the two UP majors.

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the country's politics has changed. "If you analyse the UP election, the BJP would have even won if other parties were together," he said.