Unfazed by Bahujan Samaj party chief Mayawati’s volte-face along with the subtle warning that political compulsions had forced her to go solo in Assembly byelections, the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said his party was ready to fight the polls on its own.
His remarks came after Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati said that her party would fight the upcoming by polls to 11 UP Assembly seats alone, but could work with the SP in future if Yadav was able to “fulfill his duties and instill missionary zeal in his party cadres.”
Reacting to announcement by BSP supremo, Akhilesh said: “If the coalition has broken, I will reflect deeply on it and if the coalition is not there in the byelections, then Samajwadi Party will prepare for the elections. The SP will also fight on all 11 seats alone.”
“We will contest bypolls in all 11 seats after consulting party leaders soon. Even if our paths are different, we welcome it,” Yadav said. The SP chief added that for the party the killing of its worker was more important than the ‘gathbandhan’, referring to SP leaders, who were shot dead in Uttar Pradesh on June 1. Akhilesh Yadav was in Ghazipur on Tuesday where the SP leader was shot dead soon after the Lok Sabha elections.
Over a week after the Lok Sabha elections, BSP chief Mayawati had called for an important review meeting in Delhi to take stock of their performance. Sources in the BSP claim that the BSP supremo admitted that the vote transfer from the SP side was not expected and perhaps that was the main reason for the defeat of alliance candidates in many seats, including Akhilesh’s wife Dimple Yadav and his cousin Dharmendra Yadav.
Earlier, the BSP chief had cracked the whip and removed incharges of six states, namely, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, while three state presidents of Delhi and Madhya Pradesh were also removed.