A day after the Supreme Court ruled that seeking votes in the name of religion during polls is illegal, BSP supremo Mayawati today cautioned Muslims in Uttar Pradesh not to split their votes and said that Dalits won't be swayed by hollow words.
Speaking to media here, the BSP leader asked Muslims not to waste their vote on the Samajwadi Party which she said was on the verge of splitting.
"The Samajwadi Party has been divided into two. Muslims have to be very careful. They should not divide their votes," she said.
Rubbishing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s accusations that she believed in caste-based politics, she said, "We believe in the concept of Sarvjan Hitaya (wellbeing of all) and had allocated seats to all castes."
“Dalits would not be lured merely by taking the name of Bhim Rao Ambedkar and merely announcing schemes in his name. Don't think Dalits to be naive, they know everything very well... incidents like the murder of Rohit Vemula and lynching of Dalits in Una in Gujarat can't be forgotten,” she said.
The BSP supremo was referring to the recent launch of Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) App in the name of Bhimrao Ambedkar for cashless transactions by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a landmark ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court held that elections were a secular exercise and that political leaders could not invoke caste, religion etc. to seek a mandate from voters.
"An appeal in the name of religion, race, caste, community or language is impermissible under the R P Act, 1951 and would constitute a corrupt practice sufficient to annul the election in which such an appeal was made regardless whether the appeal was in the name of the candidate's religion or the religion of the election agent or that of the opponent or that of the voter's," the court had observed.
In complete contradiction of the top court’s ruling in the matter, Mayawati went on to provide a detailed a break-up of the number of seats caste and religious groups contested from.
She said that among the upper caste, Brahmins were given 66 seats to contest, Kshatriyas got 36 seats and other groups were allocated 11 seats.
Luring both Muslim and upper caste votes, Mayawati said her regime took care of the upper castes.
"Our party advocated finance-based reservation for the upper castes, Muslims and other religious minorities in Parliament," she said.
Yesterday, PM Modi had during his mega Lucknow rally taken on the BSP directly for indulging in caste-politics in the state.
"Will politics stoop so low? Why were some people troubled when we launch a mobile app after Bhimrao Ambedkar?" the Prime Minister said, referring to the recently-launched BHIM app for cashless transactions.
Attacking the Prime Minister over demonetisation drive, she said, “Common man is concerned about the inefficiency of the government. I would pray to God that the government gets some "Sadbuddhi" (good sense) in 2017.”
