After the Samajwadi Party failed to secure the Rajya Sabha seat for its ally Bahujan Samaj Party’s candidate, BSP supremo Mayawati has given indications of fissures within the alliance. Mayawati has stated that her party would not activate any of its cadres for any upcoming bypolls in Uttar Pradesh which means that the Samajwadi Party will have to contest the bypolls for the Kairana parliamentary constituency and Noorpur Assembly seats alone.
After Mayawati’s meeting with BSP’s district and zonal coordinators, the party said, “BSP will not activate its cadres in any bypoll in future, the way it did it in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.” Speaking after the defeat in the Rajya Sabha elections, Mayawati had said that Akhilesh Yadav had displayed political immaturity in depending on independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh for BSP candidate’s victory. She also said that had she been in Akhilesh Yadav’s position, she would have given first preference to the BSP candidate.
However, even after the Rajya Sabha defeat, Mayawati had assured that the result won’t affect the SP-BSP alliance. She had said at a press conference, “They may have defeated us, But the workers of BSP and SP will now work with even more force to stop them from coming to power in 2019.”
It appears that the road between now and 2019 general elections won’t be as smooth for the alliance as the opposition would want it to be.
