Akhilesh: SP ready to sacrifice for BSP to ensure BJP defeat in 2019

To ensure the rout of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2019, Samajwadi Party (SP) is willing to play even second fiddle to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh, say news reports.

“Even if we have to sacrifice 2-4 seats to ensure BJP’s defeat, we will not back out. We will continue our alliance with the BSP in 2019. Our motive is to win elections against BJP,” former Chief Minister and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Sunday, addressing a rally in Mainpuri.

Coming down heavily on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, he said, “BJP lost the last four bypolls in UP to a united opposition. They lost the crucial Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur Assembly bypolls recently.”

The coming together of SP and BSP during Lok Sabha by poll had defeated BJP in Gorakhpur and Phulpur as well, prompting Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to admit that: “The party needs to do a serious introspection rather than remain complacent.”

On the basis of constituency-wise data from the 2017 Assembly elections, political analysts have predicted that the NDA is likely to lose as many as 50 of its 73 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh if SP and BSP votes are combined. They claim that SP-BSP combine could win over 57 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state whereas the BJP-Apna Dal only 23 seats.

Earlier, in BSP’s national executive last month, Mayawati had said that she would ally with other parties only if her party gets “a respectable number of seats”. Reacting to the BJP’s warning against trusting Akhilesh, she had blasted the ruling party, stating that “communal forces like BJP and RSS are becoming increasingly worried as secular forces are uniting.”

Meanwhile, Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia, has said that his party is open to an alliance with like-minded parties not only for the assembly polls, but also the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Significantly, he added that the party is willing to let regional parties take the lead wherever the need of the coalition warrants.