After burning his fingers in a pre-poll alliance with the Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party during two crucial elections, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said that his party would not be aligning with any major party in the 2022 Assembly elections.
Akhilesh is ready to bury the hatchet with estranged uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav who has formed his Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia). He said that if the SP came to power, Shivpal’s party would have representation in the cabinet.
The SP had forged an alliance with the Congress for 2017 UP Assembly polls and with the BSP and Rashtriya Lok Dal for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
While in the 2017 UP Assembly polls, the BJP romped home with 312 seats, the Congress won only seven seats and the SP won 47 seats. Similarly in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the SP could bag only a meagre five seats while the BSP could manage 10 seats.
“We will adjust Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) too. Jaswantnagar is his (Shivpal Yadav’s) seat and the SP left the seat for him. In coming times, we will make their leader a cabinet minister and also make needed adjustments,” Akhilesh said.
Earlier, Samajwadi Party had withdrawn its plea for disqualification of Shivpal Yadav from the membership of UP Assembly. This was seen as coming together of the estranged nephew and uncle. After this, Shivpal also returned the gesture and called up nephew Akhilesh and thanked him for taking back the disqualification application.
Shivpal Yadav was elected from Jaswantnagar Assembly seat in 2017 elections. After his public spat with nephew and then chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, he floated Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) and unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha poll on its symbol from Firozabad.
Alleging rigging in recently concluded bypolls to seven Assembly seats in UP, the SP chief alleged, “When the elections are contested by poll officers, SPs, ADMs, SHOs and police personnel, who can win? The BJP was not contesting the bypolls, government officials were.” .
On the Bihar elections, Akhilesh commented, “The people supported Rashtriya Janata Dal led Mahagathbandhan while the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance stole people’s mandate. The Bihar poll was neither free nor fair and all pre-poll and exit polls showed a clear edge to the grand alliance, which suddenly changed.”