 "Mayawati mocks Akhilesh for saying he wanted her to become prime minister")
BSP supremo Mayawati on Friday mocked Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav's assertion that he wanted her to become the prime minister and wondered how someone who could not fulfil his own dream of becoming the chief minister will manage to realise the aspirations of others.
Reacting to Yadav's statement that he wanted her to become the prime minister and that the SP had forged an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls for this, Mayawati, in a tweet in Hindi, said, "When the SP chief could not fulfil his own dream of becoming the chief minister (of Uttar Pradesh) even after securing the votes of Muslims and Yadavs and forming an alliance with several parties, how can he fulfil the dream of others to become the prime minister."
In a related tweet, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister wondered how a party that managed to win only five seats in Uttar Pradesh in the last Lok Sabha polls despite stitching up an alliance with the BSP will make her the prime minister.
"Therefore, they need to stop making such childish statements," she added.
The BSP and the SP contested the 2019 general election in an alliance but parted ways subsequently and have regularly hit out at each other since then.
In another tweet, the BSP president, who on Thursday said she never aspired to become the president but would rather prefer becoming the prime minister or the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh to realise her goals for uplifting the downtrodden, said, "Irrespective of whether I become the chief minister or the prime minister in the future, I can never become the president of the country in the interest of the weaker and neglected sections. Therefore, the SP's dream of having its own chief minister in Uttar Pradesh will never be fulfilled."
Replying to reporters' questions on Thursday about Mayawati's aspiration to become the prime minister, Yadav had said, "I am happy with it (the statement). I also wanted that. Last time (in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls), the alliance (with BSP) was forged for this. Had the alliance continued, people of the Bahujan Samaj, the BSP and those who follow the principles of BR Ambedkar would have seen who would become the prime minister."
Earlier in the day, Mayawati had said, "I have not spent my life in comfort and have struggled to work on the path shown by Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram to ensure that their followers and the downtrodden stand on their feet. Everyone knows that this can be done not by becoming the president, but by becoming the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the prime minister of the country."
In Mainpuri on Wednesday, Yadav had alleged that the BSP had transferred its votes to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in this year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and now, it will be interesting to see whether the saffron party makes Mayawati the president or not in return.