READY TO FACE ANY COALITION CHALLENGER IN 2019, SAYS YOGI

NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Saturday his party is ready with a strategy to take on the challenge of a united opposition in his state in the 2019 parliamentary elections, even as he blamed “complacency and overconfidence” for the BJP’s loss at the bypolls this March.

Speaking at the News18 network’s Rising India summit in New Delhi, he put the bypoll loss to a tie-up between the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party into perspective, saying his party has a plan if the two rivals join hands for 2019.

“We have a strategy in place to contest against SP and BSP together. These plans are not made public, but are executed,” he said and claimed that the BJP will win 80 seats in the Lok Sabha polls. “These parties have been in power in the past; but today nobody can alone face the BJP. They cannot even decide who will be the leader of the coalition,” the chief minister said.

According to him, the BJP lost the bypolls to Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha constituencies because of local issues as well as party workers becoming complacent and many of them staying home, which brought down the polling percentage.

Adityanath, the chief priest of the influential Gorakhnath Mutt, was a five-time MP for Gorkhapur and the BJP conceded defeat in this seat considered its pocket borough in 29 years. Phulpur was vacated by deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.