Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav at a press conference in Lucknow on Saturday.
Highlights
- BJP leaders worried, making attempts to join us: Akhilesh Yadav
- Samajwadi Party and BSP to contest in 38 seats each in Uttar Pradesh
- The alliance would "rob PM Modi and Amit Shah of their sleep", they said
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav today said that his party's alliance with Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party has left leaders and workers of the BJP worried. They are now making attempts to join them to save their political careers, he said.
"Not just the top BJP leadership, but also the grassroots-level workers have given up hope after the BSP-SP alliance. The booth workers of the BJP are now saying 'humara booth, hua chaknachoor (our booth is destoryed)'. These disappointed BJP leaders and workers now desperately want to join BSP-SP for their survival," Mr Yadav said in a tweet.
Once arch rivals, the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party on Saturday announced their long-anticipated alliance to take on the BJP in the state in the national election due this year. The alliance would "rob Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah of their sleep", they said.
Both the parties will contest 38 seats each. As expected, the two parties have kept the Congress out of the alliance, but spared Amethi, which is Congress president Rahul Gandhi's constituency, and Sonia Gandhi's seat Raebareli.
Nearly 25 years ago, the Samajwadi Party, then led by Akhilesh Yadav's father Mulayam Singh, and the BSP fell out after their coalition government in Uttar Pradesh crashed. It happened after Samajwadi workers barged into a guest house in Lucknow on June 2, 1995 and roughed up Mayawati for pulling out of their coalition government.
"For the sake of the nation, we decided to rise above the Lucknow guest house incident and again come together," Mayawati stressed, a clarification aimed at PM Modi, who had at a recent rally in Agra scorned her for "forgetting" that episode while allying with the Samajwadi Party.
Last year, the two parties teamed up for the first time after the incident for important bypolls that were prestige battles for the BJP. The alliance managed to win three seats, including UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's Gorakhpur.
In 2014, the BJP and its ally Apna Dal managed to win a whopping 73 of Uttar Pradesh's 80 parliamentary seats, while the Samajwadi party managed five seats. The BSP drew a blank.