Even as the Samajwadi Party failed to win even a single one of the four Assembly seats from where bypolls were held, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in his concluding speech of the party’s three-day national conference here attacked the BSP and exhorted workers to launch a state-wide stir against the Mayawati government.

The news of the BSP’s sweep — three out of four seats — trickled in even as Mulayam was speaking. But even as it became known that the SP had lost in its strongholds of Malihabad and Bidhuna, a shaken Mulayam promptly blamed the debacle on Mayawati, accusing her of misusing the official machinery.

Jolted by the poll defeat perhaps, the issue of withdrawing support to the UPA government, too, did not figure on the concluding day, though the SP had launched a scathing attack against the Congress and its UP resurgence in the first day of the conference. Sources had it that a resolution authorising Mulayam to take a call for extending support to the Centre was to be presented on the last day, but that did not come up either, making it clear that the SP was in a political bind.