With fissures apparently appearing in the alliance of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma Monday said the 'gathbandhan' (of SP-BSP) is today "taking its last breath, and is on ventilator".
"Thanks to the developmental works of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, people have broken the barriers of caste and religion. The 'gathbandhan' is today taking its last breath, and is on ventilator," he told PTI here.
He added, "Alliances of opposing ideologies are never successful -- be it the SP-Congress or the BSP-Congress. All experiments to forge caste-based alliances in Uttar Pradesh have proved to be a failure. People across the country have accepted Modiji's 'sabka saath, sabka vikaas, sabka vishwaas' and outright rejected such caste-based alliances."
"The alliances which are formed or forged on the basis of caste or religion eventually lose their existence. In UP, there was an unnatural and opportunistic alliance, it was shattered by the caste-less (jaati-viheen) work of the BJP whose mantra is 'sabka saath, sabka vikaas, sabka vishwaas'."
Sharma's statement assumes significance as it comes hours after BSP supremo Mayawati expressed her unhappiness over the performance of the 'gathbandhan' in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls.
Earlier in the day, BSP chief Mayawati asked party workers not to depend on alliances to win votes but to improve the party's organisation.
At a meeting of the Bahujan Samaj Party's Uttar Pradesh unit in Delhi, she asked office bearers, MLAs and newly-elected MPs to be prepared to contest the assembly by-elections on their own, sources said here.
A total of 11 assembly bypolls are due in UP after MLAs won Lok Sabha polls.
Nine BJP MLAs won the Lok Sabha elections, while one each from BSP and SP were elected to the Lower House.
Mayawati told the gathering at the party headquarters here that the BSP won 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh due to BSP's traditional votebank and the votes of Samajwadi Party could not get transferred to its candidates.
She cited poor performance of its alliances in various states during assembly and Lok Sabha elections to drive home the point that the BSP will have to strengthen its own organisational structure and not depend on other parties to win elections.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)