LUCKNOW, Dec 2:
Following widespread allegations of use of tampered Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in Uttar Pradesh civic elections, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Saturday demanded use of the traditional ballot paper in Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
“If Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) is honest and believes in democracy then it should discard EVMs and conduct voting through ballot papers. General elections are due in 2019,” Ms Mayawati said. “If BJP leaders believe people are with them, they must implement it. I can guarantee if ballot papers are used, BJP won’t come to power ever again.”
She made the remarks during her visit to Risaldar Park area in the heart of Lucknow to pay tributes Bhante Pragyanand, who died in Lucknow on November 30 following a prolonged illness. He was 90.
While engaged in a brief chat with media personnel, Ms Mayawati looked enthused by the party’s performance in the civic polls in which it snatched two mayoral seats from Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).
The BSP supremo thanked the sarv samaj for supporting her party candidates and blamed the BJP for misusing official machinery to win the elections.
“Had BJP not misused the official machinery, the BSP could have won more mayoral seats,” she claimed.
In a brief chat with the media, she said EVMs were the main culprit in the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in which her party lost most of the seats.
“I thank the sarv samaj for supporting BSP candidates in most of the places,” she added.
When asked about possibility of a grand alliance to take on BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BSP president said, “We want an alliance of the sarv samaj where every community and caste are included. We have an open mind for the alliance but it is up to other political parties to think over it.”
The BSP drew a blank in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and won just 19 seats in the Assembly elections early this year. But in the civic polls the party won mayoral seats in Aligarh and Meerut besides faring well in the nagar palika and nagar panchayat polls.
Ms Mayawati paid floral tributes to Bhante Pragyanand, who was among the seven bhikshus who initiated Dr B R Ambedkar into Buddhism in Nagpur on October 14, 1956.
Bhante Pragyanand, who came to India from Sri Lanka in 1942, used to live at Buddha Vihar in Risaldar Park area of the state capital, where Dr Ambedkar visited him on two occasions.
The last rites of the Buddhist monk would be held in Shravasti. (UNI)
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