After contesting two elections in alliance with the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party and courting disaster, Samajwadi Party has decided that it would not forge alliance with any party in future and would contest all elections on its own.
The SP contested the 2017 UP Assembly elections in alliance with the Congress and followed it up by joining hands with BSP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Unfortunately, both the experiments ended in disasters for the party.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has held marathon meetings with party leaders and party candidates of 2019 Lok Sabha elections to get first hand information from ground zero.
The defeat of SP candidates in Kannauj, Firozabad and Budaun shook the foundation of the party. These three Lok Sabha seats were held by members of SP’s first family. Even Akhilesh’s wife and a two-term MP from Kannauj, Dimple Yadav, was defeated in the 2019 election.
Right from SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav to the party cadre, all were opposed to the alliance with the Congress in 2017 and the BSP in 2019. All prominent SP leaders aspiring to contest the last Lok Sabha polls were denied opportunity due to the alliance with the BSP and they were up in arms against the party brass.
Meanwhile, Akhilesh Yadav attacked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Agra on Friday, saying that `jungle raj’ prevailed in Uttar Pradesh.
The SP has stepped up its attack on the BJP government as bypolls to over a dozen UP Assembly seats are around the corner.
The SP chief termed the BJP as anti-farmer, anti-trader and anti-people and said that the new definition of the BJP was Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and fear.
Akhilesh said that the BJP wanted to spread fear and hatred in India and rule by dividing the people. He charged that the BJP had no control over corruption and the Yogi Adityanath government had failed to control law and order.
The SP chief also claimed that BJP governments at the Centre and in UP had a common agenda of burdening people with tax hikes and increasing prices of petrol and diesel.
“The economic situation is alarming as millions of people have lost jobs due to recession and farmers are committing suicide. To divert public attention from pressing issues, the BJP is pursuing divisive agenda of hate... No investor is interested in putting his money in UP,” the SP chief said.
Akhilesh further said, “Financial markets and banks are in distress. Even takka, the currency of Bangladesh, is performing better than Indian rupee and people are now saying that flagship programmes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi like Make in India and Startup India had failed to deliver.”
