Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati will not contest the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, party leader Satish Chandra Misra said on Tuesday, according to ANI.
Misra said he too will not contest the polls.
The elections to the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh Assembly will be held in seven phases on February 10, February 14, February 20, February 23, February 27, March 3 and March 7. The results will be announced March 10. Goa, Punjab, Manipur and Uttarakhand are also going to polls.
Mayawati, who has been the chief minister of the state, has never contested an Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh before.
On Tuesday, Misra claimed that neither the Samajwadi Party nor the Bharatiya Janata Party will come to power in the state and asserted that the Bahujan Samaj Party is going to form the government in Uttar Pradesh.
“If Samajwadi Party does not have 400 candidates, how will they win 400 seats?” he asked.
In June, Mayawati had announced that her party was contesting the polls alone amid media reports of a tie-up with the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen.
In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the BJP had won 312 out of the 403 seats. The Samajwadi Party and the Congress had contested together. The Samajwadi Party could win only 47 seats and Congress seven. The Bahujan Samajwadi Party had won 19 seats.
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