SP-BSP Grand alliance formation for 2019 polls in soup

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party is bracing itself to go it alone in the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh.The general mood in the party is against an alliance with Bahujan Samaj Party after Ms Mayawati did a volte-face on tie-up with Congress in the poll-bound Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The standing of the BSP among minorities has also suffered after its refusal to ally with the Congress in these states.The SP brass feels that they would get overwhelming support of minority community in the 2019 election. 

''The message is clear, that Mayawati is playing the Bharatiya Janata Party's game to make it easy for the saffron party to retain power in all three states where it faces strong anti-incumbency wave. The BSP chief has punctured the opposition unity by directly attacking the Congress and tying up with Ajit Jogi in Chhattisgarh,'' said a senior SP leader here on Tuesday.

The sources in the SP said that a senior leader told party chief Akhilesh Yadav bluntly that the BSP would never ally with the Samajwadi Party, to which Akhilesh reportedly said, ''Even that would serve positively for the party in 2019 elections as the voters, particularly the minorities, would shift to the SP.''

Sources in the BSP said the party had already finalised candidates for over 60 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP and it was not willing to offer more than 18 seats to the Samajwadi Party. The possibility of Mayawati refusing to ally with the SP has forced Akhilesh to rethink about a grand alliance having BSP in its fold. And this is visible in SP stance. The party has started wooing its old guards, marginalised after Akhilesh Yadav took over as SP national president in January 2017. 

In a bid to set its house in order, the SP chief visited Rajya Sabha member Beni Prasad Verma twice this month and held long parleys with him. Mr Verma has been an old associate of SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav for five decades and is a tall leader of Kurmi caste. He distanced himself from the party after his son was denied ticket from Barabanki in 2017 assembly poll. The SP badly needs the support of Kurmis, which is the second most numerically dominant OBC caste in UP.(UNI)