Mayawati doesn't close door on Congress

Lucknow/New Delhi: Dealing a body blow to the Congress and the entire concept of Opposition unity, BSP supremo Mayawati on Wednesday declared that she would not align with the Congress in the coming Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and singled out former MP Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh for working against a Congress-BJP alliance.

Launching a blistering attack on the Congress, the BSP supremo termed senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh a “BJP agent”. She added: “The Congress, like the BJP, is conspiring to finish off the BSP.” In a statement to a news agency, Ms Mayawati blamed Mr Digvijay Singh for scuttling the alliance.

Referring to an interview given by Mr Singh in which he claimed that Ms Mayawati was being pressured by the Centre not to enter the alliance, the BSP chief said it was the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister who was working under BJP pressure.

“It was Digvijay Singh who helped the BJP form the government in Goa,” she said, adding: “In fact, it is Digvijay Singh who is afraid of agencies like the CBI and the ED.”

She vehemently denied that she was under any kind of pressure from the BJP and said instead of succumbing to such pressure, she had chosen to resign from the chief minister’s post in 2003 and then from the Rajya Sabha in 2017.

The former UP chief minister accused the Congress of remaining “arrogant” despite repeated failures and said it was a case of “rassi jal gayi, aithan nahin gayi”. She said that instead of finishing the BJP, Congress leaders were more interested in finishing the non-BJP parties.

“The Congress is under the misconception that it can defeat the BJP on its own, but it does not realise that whenever there has been a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress, the BJP has scored. The ground reality is that people have still not forgiven the Congress for its mistakes and corruption,” she stated.