Will declare our PM face after BJP names its new candidate
LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party (SP) president, Akhilesh Yadav, said on Saturday the country will have a new Prime Minister in 2019, adding that the Opposition parties will announce their pick for the post after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reveals “its new PM candidate” for next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister also hinted at his party’s possible alliance with the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the run-up to the general elections.
“We will name our PM face once the BJP tells who its new PM candidate is,” Yadav said at the Shikhar Samagam event organised in Lucknow by Hindi daily, Hindustan, a sister publication of the Hindustan Times.
Responding to a question on the BSP chief, Mayawati, he said: “…These days, the entire country is asking about her well being. Anyone with whom the SP stands ought to be fine.”
When asked whether he held ambitions for the prime minister’s post, Yadav said: “My dreams are small. I am a realist about dreaming. I dream to make more expressways, connect parts of UP with better roads, build more infrastructure in the state and develop UP after 2022.”
The 45-year-old leader did not speak about the possibility of the Congress being part of the Opposition alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
He said a grand alliance of Opposition parties will take shape before the Lok Sabha polls.
Yadav said the BJP’S time in Uttar Pradesh was up and the party was in for a shock from the voters in the state elections. He was responding to UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s statement earlier in the day about improving the BJP’S seat tally in
My dreams are small. I am a realist about dreaming. I dream to make more expressways, connect parts of UP with better roads, build more infrastructure in the state and develop UP after 2022.
the next assembly elections. The BJP had bagged 71 Lok Sabha seats in UP in 2014 and its ally, Apna Dal, had won two.
Speaking at the event before Yadav, the UP chief minister said: “The Samajwadi Party is already talking about forming the grand alliance without the Congress. Even the Congress leaders are not ready to accept Rahul Gandhi as their leader. They don’t take him [Rahul Gandhi] seriously.”
The SP chief evaded a question about his uncle, Shivpal Yadav, announcing that his Samajwadi Secular Morcha (SSM) will contest all 80 seats in UP in 2019. He, however, said: “In our home, we have open democracy. There will be many such political missiles fired at us as the polls approach, but I am not going to let my focus waver.”