If Congress Were Part Of Alliance...: Samajwadi Lawmaker's UP Analysis

A newly elected Samajwadi Party parliamentarian on Wednesday said the performance of his party's alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections would have been better if the Congress had been included in the partnership. The reaction comes after the alliance put up a dismal show in the polls, bagging only 15 out of the 80 seats in the state.

"The alliance would have been strengthened and the result would have been better," Shafiqur-rehman Warq, the SP parliamentarian from Sambhal, was quoted by news agency IANS as saying.

ST Hasan, Samajwadi Party lawmaker from Moradabad, said there was a delay in alliance between the two parties.

"I think SP and BSP votes could not assemble together... People also got less time to understand our message. Gathbandan mein thodi der hui (the alliance got a bit delayed)," he told the news agency.

The BJP swept the polls in Uttar Pradesh, winning 62 seats. The party won 303 seats out of the 542 seats that went to polls.

The results of the Lok Sabha polls were a mixed bag for the Yadav clan as except Samajwadi Party (SP) founder Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh Yadav, other members of the family failed to re-enter the lower house of Parliament this time.

The SP suffered a setback in Kannauj, Badaun and Firozabad, where Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav and cousins Dharmendra and Akshay lost to the BJP.

The vote share of the SP has also reduced from 22.35 per cent in 2014 to 17.96 per cent this year.

The BSP, however, scored a massive gain. The party had not won any seat in 2014 general elections. This time, 10 of their candidates won.

The SP and the BSP, who were rivals, came together to stop the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. They, however, chose to skip the Congress from their equation. The Congress contested the UP polls under the leadership of party general secretaries Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Jyotiraditya Scindia.