Congress should decide its role in an Opposition front, says Akhilesh Yadav

While regional parties ready to ally to defeat the BJP in the 2024 elections, the Congress as a national party should determine its course, says the Samajwadi Party leader

Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav greets during the party’s national executive meeting in Kolkata on March 18, 2023. Party national vice-president Kiranmoy Nanda is in the background. | Photo Credit: ANI

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on March 19 said that several regional parties and their leaders are making attempts to forge an alliance ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the Congress party should decide what role it will play.

“Several regional parties and few other parties are trying to forge an alliance or a front. Mamata Banerjee is also making attempts in that direction, so is Chief Minister of Telangana (K. Chandrasekhar Rao) and Bihar Chief Minister (Nitish Kumar). Congress should decide its own role. Congress is a national party and we are regional parties,” Mr. Yadav said. 

Speaking to journalists at the conclusion of the national executive meeting of his party, the SP leader said that the formula of the front is to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the next general elections.

Mr. Yadav’s stand of maintaining equal distance from the BJP and the Congress is in consonance with Trinamool Congress’s stand of not allying with the Congress before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Mr. Yadav had met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at her residence in Kolkata on Friday, March 17.

During the press conference, Mr. Yadav criticised the BJP Government at the Centre for misuse of Central agencies and added that BJP will be politically finished, “just like Congress”, for misusing these agencies.

“Any political party which is opposed to them (BJP), the ED, CBI and Income Tax is after them,” he pointed out. After West Bengal, if political activists are targeted most by the Central agencies in any other State, it is in Uttar Pradesh, he added.

Mr. Yadav raised the demand for a caste-based census and said neither the BJP nor the Congress favours the exercise. He alleged that the UPA-2 regime had promised to conduct a caste census but later “backtracked”. “We want the BJP-led Central government to conduct the caste census. Several leaders have been demanding it. But like the Congress, the saffron party is also not keen on conducting it,” he claimed.

During the interaction, Mr. Yadav came down heavily on the Uttar Pradesh Government on a host of issues, including fake encounters, custodial deaths in the State and the electricity crisis.

“Whenever these fake encounters [are] probed, a number of officials will find themselves in the dock,” he added.

Mr. Yadav said that Uttar Pradesh being the biggest State in the country has helped the BJP to assume power in the Centre twice. He expressed hope that after the national executive committee meeting of SP, the party — along with its allies — will try to defeat BJP on all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in U.P.