The Samajwadi Party is non-committal whether it would enter into an electoral alliance with the Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday said the talks over an alliance could wait till the elections and it was time for him to strengthen the SP.
“It is decided that the we will first set our party right and prepare for the battle on the ground that’s coming up. The talks for an alliance could be held when elections come,” Mr. Yadav told reporters.
He was responding to a specific question whether his party would contest the Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Congress. The two parties unsuccessfully fought the 2017 UP Assembly elections together but contested the subsequent local body polls on their own. Even in the Sikandra bypoll, which the BJP won, both the Congress and SP had fielded their own candidates.
Mr. Yadav said he did not want to waste time in alliance talks right now.
He, however, said that “we socialists don't change friends easily and when we enter into a friendship we do it after a lot of thought.”
Mr. Yadav's non-committal stand on an alliance with the Congress comes days after the party, along with the BSP, was absent from a meeting of Opposition parties convened by him in Lucknow.
The meeting was called to gather momentum against the use of EVM in the upcoming Lok Sabha bypoll for Phulpur and Gorakhpur seats but was also seen as a step taken by Mr. Yadav to organise non-BJP parties.
