Congress ‘ready to fight alone’ as SP and BSP join hands in UP
lucknow — The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have agreed to an alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, an SP leader said on Saturday.
A formal announcement on the gathbandhan between the two Uttar Pradesh-based parties may take place later this month, SP’s national spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said.
He said Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati had given their in-principle approval to the alliance after a series of meetings between them.
The two leaders also met on Friday, he said. Talks are on with other parties as well, the spokesperson said. “There has been an in-principle approval for the gathbandhan. And there is a possibility that an announcement in this regard will be made this month,” Chaudhary said.
A number of meetings between SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP supremo Mayawati have already been held. Yesterday too, both leaders met in Delhi.”
“Talks are going on to accommodate some smaller parties in the alliance,” he said. He admitted that the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which has a presence in western UP, is among these parties.
When asked about the possible inclusion of Congress in the UP alliance, Chaudhary said: “This will be decided by Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati.” But he added the alliance will not field candidates in Amethi and Raebareli, leaving the two Lok constituencies for Congress president Rahul Gandhi and United Progress Alliance chief Sonia Gandhi.
Politically crucial Uttar Pradesh sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
The opposition parties defeated the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in three Lok Sabha bypolls last year.
In the Kairana Lok Sabha byelections in May last year, the BJP lost to the joint opposition candidate, RLD’s Tabassum Hasan.
The seat had fallen vacant following the death of the BJP candidate Mriganka Singh’s father Hukum Singh.
Tabassum Hasan was supported by the Congress, the SP and the BSP. In March, the BJP lost the Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.
In the last parliamentary elections in 2014, the BJP won 71 seats, securing 42.63 per cent of the votes. BJP ally Apna Dal bagged two seats.
Samajwadi Party won five seats with a vote share of 22.35 per cent. The BSP did not win any seat while securing 19.77 per cent votes.
Congress registered wins on two seats in 2014, bagging 7.53 per cent of the votes. PL Punia, a Rajya Sabha member from the Congress, on Saturday said that the Congress party
was preparing to contest the polls alone. “A coalition is not important... Our workers are ready... We have not spoken to anyone about an alliance,” NDTV quoted him as saying.
However, a senior Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav, uncle of Akhilesh Yadav, said that the talks of sidelining the Congress are “imaginary”.
“Why are you imagining?” he asked reporters. Akhilesh had last week hinted at payback when his party’s lone MLA in Madhya Pradesh did not make it to new Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s list of ministers. He said that the Congress had gone back on its promise to do so, despite the SP’s role in helping the Congress reach the majority mark. “Thanks to the Congress, they did not make our vidhayak (legislator) a minister,” Akhilesh Yadav had said last week. By doing so, the Congress had “cleared the path for Uttar Pradesh,” the SP leader had said. —