Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati at an election rally in Azamgarh on Wednesday, May 8, 2019. (PTI)Mayawati on Monday announced that the Bahujan Samaj Party would contest all future elections alone, sounding the end of the alliance with the Samajwadi Party a day after appointing family members to top party posts. A political observer suggested she may have ended the alliance so she could promote her brother — rather than Samajwadi chief Akhilesh Yadav — as the candidate for chief minister during the 2022 Assembly polls. Before Sunday’s meeting, Mayawati had got senior BSP politicians, including the 10 new MPs, to stand in a queue and surrender their mobile phones, keys and watches at a counter. “The defeats of Dimple Yadav (wife of Akhilesh) in Kannauj, Dharmendra Yadav (cousin of Akhilesh)… forced me to rethink the alliance.”

Source: The Telegraph June 25, 2019 01:18 UTC