Mayawati has said that the Bahujan Samaj Party will never ally with the Samajwadi Party and the Congress because they "have always been against the reservation policy".

“Will it ever be in the interest of the SCs, STs and OBCs to go for any alliance with the anti-reservation SP and Congress in elections?” the BSP chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister asked in a post in Hindi on X on Sunday. “It will never happen and so they (the SCs, STs and OBCs) are advised to stand up for themselves.”

The immediate trigger for Mayawati's comments was Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's assertion in Allahabad on Saturday evening that if voted to power, his party’s government would conduct a caste census and change the Constitution to lift the 50 per cent cap on reservation in jobs and academics.

Mayawati wrote: “Why is the Congress talking about a caste census now when it didn’t do so before the BJP came to power (in 2014)? The followers of Babasaheb Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar will never pardon the Congress, which organised the Samvidhan Samman Samaroh in Prayagraj (Allahabad) yesterday because it didn’t bestow on Babasaheb the Bharat Ratna during his lifetime or after his death.”

Mayawati also accused the Congress and the SP of ignoring BSP founder and her mentor Kanshi Ram, “who had given an impetus to Babasaheb’s movement”. She said the two parties did not observe State mourning when Kanshi Ram died in 2006. The Congress was in power at the Centre and the SP in Uttar Pradesh then.