A day after the Samajwadi Party welcomed two Bharatiya Janata Party ministers and five MLAs into its fold, party chief Akhilesh Yadav said there was no more room in his party for "any BJP MLA or minister anymore".
Three ministers of the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan and Dharm Singh Saini, quit the cabinet and the ruling party and joined the SP on Friday ahead of next month's election.
Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday hit out at the UP chief minister minutes after the BJP announced Yogi Adityanath as the party candidate from his stronghold, the Gorakhpur assembly constituency.
"Earlier they (BJP) used to sometimes say he will fight from Ayodhya or he will fight from Mathura or he will contest from Prayagraj and Deoband'... now see... I like that the BJP has already sent Yogi Adityanath to Gorakhpur. Yogi should stay there... there is no need for him to come from there," the SP chief said.
"Let me say this... I will not take any BJP MLA (or) minister anymore. The BJP can deny tickets to their leaders if they wish to..." Yadav said in a press conference here on Saturday.
Besides the BJP rebels, the SP chief on Friday had also inducted one MLA from Apna Dal, a BJP ally.
The exodus of Other Backward Classes leaders from the BJP and the Yogi Adityanath government over a 72-hour period this week is being widely seen as having blown a big hole in the ruling party's re-election bid.
Apart from Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, five BJP MLAs -- Roshan Lal Verma, Brijesh Prajapti, Mukesh Verma, Vinay Shakya and Bhagwati Sagar -- also joined the SP on Friday. The third minister to quit -- Dara Singh Chauhan -- will also join the SP soon.
Akhilesh Yadav’s declaration also came hours after Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad said seat-sharing talks between his Azad Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party had broken down.
"... We are saying now we will not take any more leaders into the Samajwadi Party... We sacrificed a lot to bring people together (but) now there is no scope to take to anyone else," Akhilesh Yadav said.
Ahead of the election, Akhilesh Yadav has stitched together an alliance of regional parties, including those with sway in the non-Yadav OBC communities -- like those brought on board on Friday - to defeat the BJP.
In 2017, the BJP's strategy to beat the Samajwadi Party was to win over the non-Yadav OBC castes given Yadav's most loyal voters are seen to be Yadavs and Muslims. Akhilesh Yadav last year also joined hands with Om Prakash Rajbhar's Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party and with Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal in December.
Uttar Pradesh votes for a new government in a seven-phase poll that begins on February 10, with results to be counted on March 10.