Akhilesh Yadav on UP alliance: ‘Some experiments fail’

A day after the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was formally suspended, SP national president Akhilesh Yadav likened the politics of alliance with scientific experiments and said that “sometimes experiments do fail”. Speaking to the media in Lucknow on the SP’s course of action after meeting Muslim community members on Eid, Yadav said, “I have been a science student. There are experiments, and experiments don’t always succeed. But then one gets to know one’s weaknesses.”

“What I had said for Mayawati ji at the first joint press conference, I still say that ‘Mera samman unka samman hai (my honour is her honour)’. As far as gathbandhan or fighting elections alone is concerned, political roads are wide open for all. I will consult my party leaders on our future strategy.”

On Tuesday, both Mayawati and Yadav – he has a Master’s in environmental engineering from Sydney -- had announced that the grand alliance forged to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general elections was suspended as of now and that both the parties would contest the upcoming 11 bye-elections in Uttar Pradesh separately. The first hint of the alliance – it won only 15 Lok Sabha seats compared to the BJP’s 62 in the state – coming apart was made by BSP chief Mayawati on Monday. On Tuesday, she formally announced that the BSP would go it alone in the bypolls but hinted that alliance doors would still remain open in case Yadav managed to revive his party. “But if he fails to re-activate his party, it is better that we go separate ways,” she said.

Within hours, Yadav, who was on a two-day tour of Azamgarh and Ghazipur, said, “If the coalition has broken, I will reflect deeply on it and if the coalition isn’t there in the by-elections, then SP will prepare for the elections.”

“SP will also fight on all 11 seats alone,” he said.

The third alliance partner, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, too said on Wednesday it will fight the upcoming bypolls separately. “It is Mayawati ji who exited the alliance for the by-polls. We were ally of the Samajwadi Party and not of the BSP in the gathbandhan. We will definitely contest the bypolls on some seats. The party with its top leaders will decide about the number of seats it will contest and how,” said the RLD state president Masood Ahmed. The bypolls have been necessitated because 11 members of the UP legislative assembly have been elected to parliament in the general elections. Of the 11 MLAs, nine are from the BJP, and one each from the SP and the BSP. Of the 15 seats that the mahagathbandhan won in Uttar Pradesh, the BSP won 10 seats, the SP five and the RLD drew a blank. The BSP, which had won no seats in the 2014 general elections, was the only gainer in the alliance. The SP tally remained the same in both 2019 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But Mayawati chose to part ways, blaming the SP for failing to transfer Yadav votes to alliance candidates.