Mayawati puts onus on Akhilesh for Lok Sabha poll debacle, ends alliance for now
Lucknow, Jun 4 (IBNS): Almost proving Prime Minister Narendra Modi's forecast on grand alliance, the coming together of the arch-rivals- Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)- ended on Tuesday with BSP chief Mayawati's announcement of fighting the upcoming bypolls in Uttar Pradesh alone.
"The dates of the bypolls will be announced anytime now. We will fight them alone," Mayawati.
Though Mayawati tried to maintain a good term with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on a personal level, politically the veteran has put the onus on the SP for the alliance's Lok Sabha poll debacle, accusing the ally of "not transfering Yadav votes".
Of course, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) was a part of the alliance but all eyes were on the arithmatic of SP-BSP which was defeated by Modi's "chemistry".
"Yadav votes were not transfered to us. The SP has lost in its own bastions," Mayawati said targeting Yadav.
Terming the grand alliance as "Sharab", Modi during his election campaign had said the SP-BSP-RLD political pact will end after May 23, the day on which the votes were counted.
However, the BSP supremo, who had once allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in her political career, kept a window open for a future tie-up with the SP.
"My bonding with Akhilesh Yadav and his wife Dimple Yadav is now not only political but also personal. It will continue........If in future, I see Akhilesh Yadav could manage his own organisation then I can give it thought to stitch a similar alliance," she said.
In the Lok Sabha polls, the SP could win just five seats while the BSP bagged 10. The SP-BSP alliance's figure was undoubtedly dwarfed by the BJP's 62 out of 80 seats.
In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the SP had stitched an alliance with the Congress but the result was devastating as well. Even a day before the counting, Yadav had said it would have been better for him to include the BSP in the alliance.
Since the landslide victory by the BJP in the 2014 General Elections, the saffron outfit's performance in several bypolls in last five years was abysmal. Adding a pinch of salt to the BJP's wound as far as bypolls are concerned, the SP-BSP-RLD alliance had snatched Gorakhpur and Phulpur constituencies, which were the bastions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.
The BJP had won 71 seats alone in the 2014 General Elections.
Image Credit: Samajwadi Party Twitter page
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