Even as the Samajwadi Party is yet to come to terms with the humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha election, the party has indicated that it will contest the forthcoming by-elections to 11 UP assembly seats in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party.
The SP had contested the recent Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal but it proved to disastrous for the party.
The by-elections to 11 assembly seats are likely to be held in the next few months.
Leaders of both SP and BSP claim that Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati are determined to take forward their alliance to the 2022 UP assembly election and the bypolls will be a testing ground for them.
The first opportunity for the alliance to test their partnership at the state level after the Lok Sabha debacle will be the UP assembly bypolls as 11 MLAs have been elected to the Lok Sabha and will vacate their Vidhan Sabha seats.
Sources in the BSP said that before leaving for Delhi on Saturday, Mayawati told her party leaders that the alliance with SP and RLD would continue.
“Now all eyes will be on the results of the UP seats bypolls. The outcome will be crucial for the alliance in the state,” said a BSP leader on condition of anonymity.
Though the alliance did not win the expected number of seats in the Lok Sabha polls, the tie-up proved to be a profitable venture for the BSP which increased its seats the Lower House of Parliament from zero to 10. The SP was not so lucky as Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav, and cousins Dharmendra Yadav and Akshay Yadav ended up losing their seats to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Among the MLAs elected to the Lok Sabha are members of the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet as well. Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who has been elected from Allahabad, has to vacate her Lucknow Cantonment assembly seat, Satyadev Pachauri who won from Kanpur will leave his Govind Nagar assembly seat and SP Singh Baghel, who has been elected to Lok Sabha from Agra will vacate his Tundla assembly seat.
Other BJP lawmakers who have to vacate their assembly seats after being elected to Lok Sabha include Pratapgarh MLA Sangam Lal Gupta (Pratapgarh), Saharanpur MLA Pradeep Kumar (Kairana), Chitrakoot MLA RK Singh Patel (Banda), Barabanki MLA Upendra Rawat (Barabanki), Bahraich MLA Akshyawar Lal (Bahraich) and Aligarh MLA Rajvir Singh (Hathras).
The lone SP MLA elected to the Lok Sabha is party heavyweight Mohammad Azam Khan from Rampur. BSP MLA from Jalalpur, Ritesh Pandey, has also been elected from Ambedkar Nagar.