The grand alliance of the two political parties, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP,) will contest the Lok Sabha elections for 50:50 seats.
Mayawati Das, the BSP leader, and Akhilesh Yadav, the SP chief, yesterday (Saturday,) held a joint press conference and made an official announcement about their ‘mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance.)
During the conference, both the leaders spoke about the 50:50 partnership for the elections.
Speaking about the maths of the seat sharing, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati Das said, both the BSP and the SP will contest for 38 seats each, leaving 2 seats for the smaller parties of the alliance.
Confident about the Lok Sabha elections, Mayawati Das and Akhilesh Yadav said, they would “rob Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah of their sleep.”
When asked whether there is any possibility of a coalition with the Rahul Gandhi led Congress party, Ms. Das said, “There is not much benefit to us from allying with the Congress. We have decided that we will not tie up with a party like the Congress across the country where they can’t transfer votes to us.”
However, the BSP and the SP left 2 seats for the Congress party and said, they will not contest the Uttar Pradesh elections in Amethi and Raebareli.
Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, did not leave the chance to criticise the step of the BSP and the SP to form the grand alliance and called it a desperate move.
Mr. Yogi said, it is a “desperate attempt to save their existence.” He further added, “Public knows the truth and they will give the reply when time comes.”
Uttar Pradesh will conduct its elections (scheduled for April 2019) for 80 Lok Sabha seats. The major parties contesting are the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP,) the grand alliance of the BSP and the SP and the Congress party.
