SP, BSP confirm equal partnership for LS polls
Former rivals to contest 38 UP seats each, stay out of Gandhi bastions
LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Saturday announced an alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, in which each will contest 38 seats in Uttar Pradesh, leaving two seats for the Congress and two for other smaller allies.
Addressing a press conference in Lucknow along with Akhilesh, Mayawati said the SP-BSP alliance “will give sleepless nights” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath hit back, tweeting: “This is a coalition of casteist, corrupt and opportunistic mindset that doesn’t want development and good governance. Public knows everything and this unholy alliance will be given a perfect answer.” In Delhi,union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the alliance is for their survival and not in the interest of the country or Uttar Pradesh.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the SP had won five seats, while the BSP failed to win any. The BJP got 71 seats and its ally Apna Dal two seats out of the total 80.
The Congress won two -- Rae Bareli and Amethi; the two seats are held by United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi. In the 2017 assembly polls, SP and BSP got 22 %
This...will rob ‘guruchela’ — PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah — of their sleep... we will crush the saffron party...
MAYAWATI, BSP chief
votes each while the BJP got 42.6% votes, winning 312 of the total 403 seats.
The Sp-congress alliance got 56 seats and the BSP was a distant third with 19 seats.
The BSP and SP joined hands during the parliamentary by-polls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur last year in which SP candidates backed by the BSP succeeded in winning both the seats. Gorakhpur had been vacated by Adityanath and Phulpur by deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya. In Kairana, the third by-poll in 2018, the two parties supported the Rashtriya Janata Dal candidate,tabassum Begum, who won.
As Mayawati said, the SP and BSP are looking to combine their vote bank, which primarily consists of about 22% Dalits, 45% other backward classes and 19 % Muslims in the politically crucial state.