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Bhatt, a former BJP minister who quit the saffron party over differences with Chief Minister Narendra Modi on the eve of the December 2007 Assembly elections, said his party would not seek electoral alliance with any party.
“Even in the last Assembly polls, the BSP contested on as many as 166 out of the 182 seats,” he said. Though the party was not able to win a single seat, it polled a total of 5.67 lakh votes, which was 2.27 per cent of the total votes cast.
Asked what purpose it would serve for his party to field its candidates if they were not able to win, he said that similar questions were asked by journalists as well as established political parties when the party entered the political arena in Uttar Pradesh about a decade and a half ago.
“We are number one party in UP, with several Congress and BJP candidates losing even their deposits in the last UP Assembly elections,” he said, adding: “At a time, we could not win even a single seat in UP. But today, we have formed the government in Lucknow on our own,” Bhatt asserted. “We are mobilising the suppressed and backward classes, apart from minorities and adivasis to join the party and vote for it. I am sure we will succeed in emerging as the third alternative in future,” Bhatt said, in response to a question about the sections his party was targeting in the state.
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