Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav have started discussing the possibility of an alliance in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the Lok Sabha polls later this year. The once bitter rivals met in Delhi on Friday to talk about the possibility of a mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) in Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress is not part of the alliance in the crucial state that has the highest number of Parliament seats in the country.
This could be cause of a major worry for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that swept the last general elections, bagging 73 of the 80 seats. However, the BJP got a jolt in the results of the byelections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur later, where Mayawati withdrew her candidate to support Akhilesh Yadav’s party. BJP lost both seats.
The SP and the BSP are both upset with the Congress. Akhilesh Yadav had mentioned this last week when the only lawmaker in the Congress government formed in Madhya Pradesh was not made a minister. This was going back on the promise made, Yadav said.
Mayawati too has been upset with the Congress, and did not go for a pre-poll alliance with the party in the recent Assembly elections. She did finally extend her support after the Congress fell short of the number of seats required to form the government in Madhya Pradesh.
Thus, it has been clear for a while now that the regional parties in several states are considering the possibility of forming an alliance against the ruling BJP for the coming Lok Sabha polls that would keep even the Congress out.
If the same sort of alliance emerges prior to the Lok Sabha polls, then while it is bad news for the BJP, there are also causes for major worry for the Congress. There are several developments taking place at the same time to form a non-Congress non-BJP alliance. TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao had earlier met Akhilesh Yadav (apart from Naveen Patnaik, Mamata Banerjee and others) to form a non-BJP non-Congress federal front to take on the BJP.
TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu on the other hand, has been trying to form an alliance against the BJP with a number of regional and national parties, including the Congress.
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