No SP-BSP 'mahagathbandhan' for UP Assembly by-polls, BJP says coalition was 'unprincipled'

Still licking their wounds after the electoral debacle, the BSP and SP on Tuesday said they were going their own ways to contest the Assembly elections in 11 seats in Uttar Pradesh after Mayawati first announced her decision to go it alone saying the Yadav community did not support the grand alliance in the Lok Sabha polls. However, she maintained that the break is not "permanent" and the two parties can come together in future.

Claiming that the Samajwadi Party's (SP) vote base, the Yadav community, did not support the alliance in the recent elections, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati today announced that she will fight the by-polls to 11 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh alone, but maintained this is not a "permanent break" with her alliance with the SP. "It's not a permanent break. If we feel in future that SP Chief succeeds in his political work, we will again work together. But if he doesn't succeed, it will be good for us to work separately. So we have decided to fight the by-elections alone," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister told ANI.

The statement from the BSP supremo came after reports surfaced that she had asked her party cadre to get ready to contest the upcoming assembly by-polls on their own after her party fared poorly in Lok Sabha polls, despite being in alliance with SP and RLD. Mayawati also praised Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and said that their relationship will continue in the future.

Reacting to the sudden development, Yadav said his party will also go it alone in the bye-elections after Mayawati announced that her party would contest these elections on its own following the poor performance of the SP-BSP alliance in the Lok Sabha elections. "I will think about what is being said about the alliance and if it has broken, the SP will also go it alone in the by-polls after consultation amongst the party members." SP chief Akhilesh Yadav told reporters shortly after Mayawati made clear her intentions of fighting the bye-elections on her own.

Meanwhile, the BJP said that the "unprincipled" SP-BSP coalition in Uttar Pradesh was bound to collapse as it has been rejected by people. "SP-BSP is an unprincipled alliance. People of Uttar Pradesh have completely rejected this alliance and gave it a result that led to its collapse," BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao told ANI here.

He claimed that the "Mahagathbandhan" in the state was formed to prevent Narendra Modi from becoming the Prime Minister again. "It was an alliance of convenience and compulsion which was crafted to prevent Modi Ji from becoming PM again," he said. Calling Mayawati's decision to go solo in the by-elections "predictable", Rao said, "this announcement is something we had predicted months ago. PM Modi, in his rallies, had said that this is an alliance of convenience. This is a self-centred alliance."

The BSP and SP dumped their decades-old animosity to form a coalition in the politically crucial Uttar Pradesh just before the Lok Sabha elections. The BSP had contested on 38 and SP fought on 37 while RLD, a junior ally, contested on three parliamentary constituencies in the state. While BSP and SP bagged 10 and 5 seats, respectively, RLD drew a blank. 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)