War of words after Mayawati blames Akhilesh for SP-BSP break-up in 2019. Why she's raking up old wounds

It started with Mayawati stating in a 59-page booklet circulated among her party workers that SP chief Akhilesh Yadav refused to take calls from her and senior party leaders, leading to the end of their alliance in 2019...

On the face of it, it looked like a rather casual, if not innocuous, attempt to brief her party cadres about what went wrong with their alliance with the SP that came up trumps in this years Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the Congress...

Multiple SP, BSP leaders and analysts ThePrint spoke to are, however, of the view that Mayawati accusing Akhilesh of ignoring her calls five years ago is far from a casual observation.Its rather a well-calculated strategy to turn it into a case of insult and humiliation allegedly meted out to the Dalit leader by Akhilesh who successfully won over a significant section of Dalits in this years general election...

But when Akhilesh Yadav approached with an offer for an alliance, the two parties entered a pre-poll alliance, it says.. A senior BSP leader told ThePrint Mayawati instructed party leaders and office-bearers to circulate the booklet among the party cadre and workers...

And in such a situation, there was no future of the alliance, he said.. Sushil Anand, son of former Rajya Sabha MP Balihari Babu and a former BSP leader who joined the SP in 2020, told ThePrint Akhilesh wanted to stick with the alliance after the 2019 elections...

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