A Hindi newspaper clipping carrying a statement made by president of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Mayawati has gone viral. It claims that the former chief minister said that she will fight alongside the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to defeat Samajwadi Party (SP). Users who shared the image hinted at a possible aliance between the BJP and the BSP.
The claim comes while the parties in the fray have started their campaigns for the upcoming 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
We found that the newspaper clipping was from October 2020, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council elections. Mayawati had said that her party would vote for any other Opposition party, including the BJP, to defeat SP after speculations of BSP leaders jumping ship to join SP surfaced. She had later clarified that BSP could never join hands with the BJP as their ideologies were very different.
CLAIM
Sharing the viral screenshot, people tried to hint at a possible alliance.
A user shared the photo and wrote in Hindi, "जय हो बहन जी! उत्तर प्रदेश को मजबूत करना है तो 2022 में फिर भाजपा जरूरी है".
[Translation: Hail sister! BJP needs to return (to power) in 2022 to strenghten Uttar Pradesh.]
An archive of the tweet can be found here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
In order to check the claim, we conducted a keyword search for "भाजपा से मिल सपा को हराएंगे" and found news reports from October 2020.
A news report published in Hindi newspaper Dainik Jagran on 29 October 2020 said that Maywati regretted forming a coalition with Akhilesh Yadav's SP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The report further stated, Mayawati said her party would go to any extent, even support BJP, to defeat SP in the next Vidhan Parishad elections.
The news was also reported by The Times of India (TOI), which said that her move was due to an open rebellion from some party MLAs.
A link to the article can be found here.
(Source: TOI/Screenshot)
We also found a video report published in BBC News Hindi's YouTube channel that carried her full statement.
None of the news reports mentioned anything about a coalition with the BJP. Additionally, we found news reports from three days later, on 2 November 2020, where she had offered clarifications on her statement.
She said that she would rather retire from politics than join the BJP as their ideologies were different.
"The alliance of the BJP with the BSP is not possible in any polls in the future. The BSP cannot contest with the communal party," she said in a media briefing, India Today reported.
"Our party will support the candidate of any party, including the BJP, which is strong to defeat the second candidate of the SP," she added and accused the SP and Congress for misusing her previous statement.
We conducted a keyword search and didn't find any recent news reports carrying a similar statement or talking about a possible coalition between the BJP and BSP.
Evidently, an old statement of Mayawati was revived ahead of the 2022 UP Assembly Elections and was shared without proper context to create a misleading narrative.
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