Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav said on Tuesday that the party will fight bypolls alone on all 11 Uttar Pradesh Assembly seats if its alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party ends.
His remarks came after Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati said that her party will fight the upcoming bypolls alone, but can work with the SP in future if Yadav is able to “fulfil his duties“, asserting that the SP failed to consolidate the Yadav votes and three seats contested by Mr. Yadav’s party members. She had held a review meeting on Monday to analyse the results of the Lok Sabh election, in which the BSP won 10 out of 38 seats it had contested and its ally, the Samajwadi party, bagged just five.
The BSP has in the past steered clear of bypoll elections. In 2018, the Gorakhpur, Kairana and Phulpur seats were won on the SP and Rashtriya Lok Dal symbols as the three parties formed an experimental alliance which was formalised in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
“If the alliance ends, we will field SP candidates on all 11 seats up for bypolls after consulting party leaders soon. Even if our paths are different, we welcome it,” Mr. Yadav said. The SP chief added that for the party the killing of its workers was more important than the ‘gathbandhan’, referring to SP leaders who were shot dead in Uttar Pradesh on June 1.
(With inputs from Omar Rashid)
