then came the statement Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav Recently garlanded the statue of BSP founder Kanshi Ram in a program in Rae Bareli. “The SP chief should introspect and remember June 2, 1995, when a ‘Dalit Ki Beti’ The guest house in Lucknow was attacked during the tenure of the SP government,” Mayawati said.
The 28-year-old incident that brought SP and BSP face to face is still relevant in UP politics. Political pundits say that the incident still haunts Mayawati and the statement is a clear indication from the BSP that the two parties will not forge an alliance again.
Shashikant Pandey, head of the political science department at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, said, “The statement of the BSP supremo shows that this incident is a thorn in the flesh and hence SP and BSP will no longer be together.”
What is guest house phenomenon?
The episode can be traced back to when the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was at its peak, but the SP and BSP alliance successfully prevented the BJP from winning UP in 1993.
However, the alliance lasted only two years, resulting in the failure of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government in 1995. However, this was only the beginning. On June 2, 1995, after the BSP announced its withdrawal from the alliance, an unruly mob of SP workers and supporters attacked Mirabai Guest House in Lucknow, where Mayawati was holding a meeting with her MLAs.
According to reports, her room was ransacked, casteist comments were made and Mayawati had to lock herself in the room to save her life. Eventually, BJP MLA Brahm Dutt Dwivedi stepped into the room and took him to safety.
What caused the incident?
In 1993, after the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya, UP was swept by a saffron wave. SP and BSP decided to join forces and contested the assembly elections winning 176 out of 424 seats in the undivided state. With the support of the Congress and others, the SP-BSP alliance formed the government with Mulayam Singh Yadav as the Chief Minister.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party with 177 seats went into cold storage, with no party willing to join it. However, in 1995, due to deteriorating relations with Mulayam, the BSP withdrew its support from the government. And shortly after, the BJP offered outside support to Mayawati, who then became chief minister.
However, this is not the first time that the guest house incident has hit the headlines. In 2019, when the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ or grand alliance was formed under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati and Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh, the episode came up again, Pandey recalls.
The Grand Alliance was anti-Congress and anti-BJP. Out of the total 80 seats in UP, the Grand Alliance had left two seats for the then Congress President. Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, to whom the BSP had announced its support. “But the system did not make any difference as the BJP with Narendra Modi managed to get 51.19 per cent vote share, while the vote share of ‘Mahagathbandhan’ was 39.23 per cent,” he said. The Congress was able to get just 6.41 per cent votes. BJP got 62 seats, while ‘Mahagathbandhan’ got 15 seats in total.
He added: “It was during the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ that she had again highlighted the issue and said that she had forgotten it.”
Apart from this, Mayawati also held a press conference with Akhilesh Yadav in 2019, where she said:Lucknow guest house kaand se country hit ko upar rahte hue humne saath aane ka faisla kiya hai (We have decided to forget the 1995 guest house incident in the interest of the country).”
While some feel that the infamous episode still haunts the BSP supremo, a section of political experts see Mayawati playing the ’emotional card’ to retain her Dalit vote bank despite electoral reverses in the 2022 UP polls. blames for. The BSP won just one seat in the 2022 UP assembly elections. Pundits, however, said that instead of such tactics, Mayawati should focus on getting back to her original flamboyant self.
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