It wasn’t too long ago that BSP supremo Mayawati appealed to the Muslim community to vote as a bloc. She urged Muslims to not divide their votes between the Congress candidate and the SP-BSP candidate, but abandon the Congress candidate and vote en masse for the gathbandhan candidate.
One would imagine that this would shake the very core of the torchbearers of secularism. But it didn’t. There was an eerie silence where not a word was spoken against Mayawati’s appeal.
Now a video has been tweeted by a senior correspondent of CNN News 18 where Mayawati is heard being unapologetic about her remark.
https://twitter.com/saahilmenghani/status/1116976909043359745?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In the video, Mayawati can be heard clarifying that she has not apologised to the Election Commission over her remarks and appeal to the Muslim community. She ensures that she clarified to the Muslim community that she stands by her comment and has no regret over it.
While Mayawati has stuck to her appeal to the Muslim community, she took to Twitter today to slam Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for saying that he is dividing the electorate between ‘Ali’ and ‘Bajrangbali’. She was alluding to the comment where CM Yogi Adityanath slammed the ones asking for a consolidation of Muslim votes and essentially meant that if they want only Muslims to vote for them, BJP would want to Hindus to consolidate.
https://twitter.com/Mayawati/status/1116944521265319936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Interestingly, the media lapped up the comment by Yogi Adityanath while giving a free pass to Mayawati’s comment. One can also bet that majority of the Lutyens’ media that has been tacitly campaigning to defeat PM Modi won’t ask Mayawati how her comment appealing to Muslims becomes inclusive while Yogi Adityanath’s statement which was an offshoot of Mayawati’s comment becomes divisive.