Former chief minister and Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav said his party would not go for an alliance with any party and would work with small parties and strengthen the SP at grassroots level.
“The SP will maintain equidistance from both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. Samajwadi Party will not form an alliance with any big party, but will adjust smaller parties. We can have local adjustments with Chachaji (Shivpal Singh Yadav). We can adjust his party on the Jaswantnagar seat. But we will decide these things before the 2022 assembly elections,” Akhilesh Yadav said here on Friday in a programme with a TV news channel.
“We have made many experiments in the past and entered into alliance. The rank and file of the party is against alliance with any party. Both the Congress and the BJP are pursuing same ends in politics,” Akhilesh said , and added, “Right now the issue is to dislodge the Yogi Adityanath government and give a new government to the people,.”
The SP chief denied that he had ever supported Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. “Some posts about the Congress were filed on Twitter but they are old and no longer relevant,” he added.
Akhilesh Yadav said that the lockdown had failed as coronavirus cases were on the rise. `` He said the people were made to believe that the first lockdown would flatten the coronavirus curve but the lockdown had been extended four times and was likely to be extended further without any tangible results. “Now we are told that we will have to live with the coronavirus,” he added.
Questioning the wisdom of the Union government on running Shramik Special trains to evacuate migrant labourers in May, the SP chief said had the rail services for migrants started earlier, it would have saved them from undergoing “horrendous experience”.
Meanwhile, Shivpal Yadav has welcomed the withdrawal of the application by the Samajwadi Party for his disqualification from the membership of UP assembly.
“It is a good decision by the Samajwadi Party and I welcome it. The adjustment or alliance issues will be decided in the future, not right now. Today, I only say that I welcome their decision. There are no other talks right now,” he said.
A senior SP leader said that Akhilesh Yadav had kept the door open for an alliance with smaller parties, which could include Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal and Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party. He said the potential alliance could be a fruitful tie-up for the Samajwadi Party, especially if Shivpal came on board.
“RLD still has a foothold in western Uttar Pradesh while Rajbhar has a presence in Ghazipur and Ballia districts of eastern UP. If Shivpal also joins hands, then the SP’s core Yadav vote will not get split,” he said.
For Akhilesh, it is a case of once bitten, twice shy in terms of allying with big parties, a source close to him said.
“Akhilesh does not want to ally with Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party after three successive defeats of the party in 2014, 2017 and 2019. But smaller forces are still an option. Let us wait for a few more months,” the source said.
