UP elections: Mayawati leads with over 200 seats
Sadiq Ali
Delhi
Fri, 11 May 2007: May 11: In one of the bitter election battles in the country??s political power house, Uttar Pradesh, ??Elephant?? led Mayawati is certain to be the next chief minister of the state, forcing Mulayam Singh to flee on his ??Bicycle??.
Mayawati led Bahujan Samaj Party BSP, stunned the opponents with formation showing that the party will get 196 in the 403 ?? member assembly.
Besides tightening her grip on the traditional vote base of Dalits and Muslims, the party succeeded in wooing Brahmins and resulted in an unexpected outcome. Chief Minister Mulayam Singh has accepted the voter??s verdict and is expected to put forward his resignation to the Governor, this afternoon.
Shocked by the emergence and victory of the BSP, Singh has already felt the heat. His party is way behind and leads in 90 constituencies, at second position. Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and Congress are at third and fourth position respectively, even after power packed campaigning by their leaders. Independent candidates would also play a decisive role as the current trend reveal 27 seats for them.
The fear of ??hung assembly?? as it is slowly releasing, BSP is expected to form the government with quite ease and Congress seems to be ready to fill the meager gap while remaining out of power. Congress spokesman, Abhishek Singhvi, deliberated on various options while saying, ??Various options, including extending a broad issue based support to the BSP, are open and the party would take a decision once the picture becomes clear.?
"Without joining the government and sitting in the opposition, we can extend a broad issue based support to the government."
Meanwhile, the party workers of BSP are jubilant and are distributing sweets at many places in the state. The celebrations began at the Mall Avenue residence of Mayawati, where party workers distributed sweets among themselves and to hordes of journalists present there.
However the counting is still going on and chief minister Mulayam Singh was leading in Gunnaur and Bharthana seats. But many of his ministers are trailing behind. The list includes Narad Rai, Yogesh Pratap Singh, Arvind Singh Gope, Harishankar Tewari, Mayankeshwar Saran Singh, Raja Ram Pandey, Vinod Kumar Singh, and Shardanand Anchal. Whereas Azam Khan, Ambika Chaudhary, Shivpal Singh Yadav, Naresh Agarwal and Ashok Bajpai are leading in their respective constituencies.
If ongoing trends continue to be like this, Mayawati might rule on more than 200 constituencies with her elephant. The ??cycle?, ??lotus? and ??hand? might remain mute spectators on the opposition benches within volatile arena of political power house of the country.