As the Lok Sabha 2019 elections are done and dusted, political parties that didn’t fare well in the polls are in the introspection mode to assess the reasons for their failure in the elections. After Mayawati, the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has iterated that the Mahagathbandhan alliance between SP-BSP in Uttar Pradesh didn’t yield the intended result.
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Akhilesh Yadav has called the ambitious alliance of SP and BSP as an experiment that failed. “It was a trial and error method. It certainly failed. I will have discussions with all party leaders for the way forward. If BSP has decided to go solo in the elections, we will too go solo on all 11 seats. Politics is open now,” Akhilesh said.
Yesterday, BSP supremo Mayawati had reiterated her stance that the Mahagathbandhan alliance didn’t succeed because of the inability of Akhilesh Yadav in stemming the vote-split of the Yadav community in Uttar Pradesh, a large chunk of which sided with the BJP. Mayawati had declared that the BSP will contest all 11 seats on its own in the upcoming assembly by-polls. Akhilesh Yadav too has stated that his party will contest on all 11 seats in the assembly bypolls alone.
It is pertinent to note here that Mayawati’s party had not won a single seat in 2014 and in 2019 her party managed to win 10 Lok Sabha seats. Yet Mayawati is blaming Akhilesh Yadav and Samajwadi Party for the humiliating defeat of the Mahagathbandhan.
With Akhilesh Yadav declaring that Mahagathbandhan was an experiment that failed, it can be safely assumed that in the foreseeable future, the SP-BSP alliance is as good as dead unless another significant issue emerges that realigns the interests of SP and BSP.