Lucknow (UP), Jun 4: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said the party will fight bypolls alone on all 11 Uttar Pradesh Assembly seats if its alliance with the BSP ends, stressing that he would deliberate on the decision carefully.
After the BSP president Mayawati announcing her decision to go solo in the bypolls, the alliance with the SP appeared to be falling apart on Tuesday.
Yadav, who was in Ghazipur to visit the residence of SP worker Vijay Yadav to express his condolence after his murder, said, “If the gathbandhan (alliance) has disintegrated or whatever that is being said about the gathbandhan is true, then I will deliberate on it very carefully…”
“When there is no alliance, we will prepare on our own for the upcoming UP bypolls and contest on all the 11 seats. We will be preparing for it and a decision will be taken after consulting senior members of the party,” he told reporters.
He said that even if the BSP treads a separate path, it is welcome.
The SP chief said, “At this point of time, the ‘gathbandhan’ is not important for us. What is more important is that the family of our slain party worker should get justice…I am more concerned over the killing of our workers.”
Vijay Yadav was killed by some unidentified people who attacked him after barging into this house on May 24.
Akhilesh Yadav, who was earlier in Azamgarh, the seat from where he won the Lok Sabha election, said, “In 2022, the SP will form a government in Uttar Pradesh and this is our strategy.”
Earlier, Mayawati said her party will fight the upcoming bypolls alone, but can work with the SP in the future if Yadav is able to “fulfil his duties”.
She also said that the Bahujan Samaj Party’s ties with the Samajwadi Party “is never going to end” and she will try to ensure that their relationship stays “intact”.
The alliance was formed in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls after a similar tie-up ensured the rout of the BJP from three Lok Sabha seats — Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana — in bypolls held last year after the saffron party swept to power in the state.
But the tie-up this time failed to yield desired results for the SP, which contested 37 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats, and for the BSP which pitted its candidates in 38 seats. While the BSP wrested 10 seats this time from nil in 2014, the SP won five, the same number of seats it bagged last time. Another ally RLD lost on all the three seats it contested jointly with the SP and the BSP.
The alliance had not fielded candidates in the Congress strongholds of Rae Bareli and Amethi, though the grand old party could retain only Rae Bareli, losing out Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani.
