Biking Solo In 2019: No Space For ‘Hand’ Or ‘Elephant’, Hints Samajwadi Party 

Samajwadi Party is gearing up to fight the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on its own in Uttar Pradesh. The mood in the party is generally against any alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party, after Mayawati’s recent decision to contest alone in the upcoming assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, The New Indian Express has reported.

Many in the party are of the opinion that Mayawati’s move to go alone has caused a dent in her minority vote bank, who were expecting her to ally with the Congress, and will ultimately benefit the SP as the minority community will overwhelmingly support it in the 2019 elections.

''The message is clear. 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,'' a seniour SP leader told TOI on Tuesday (22 October).

According to the report, a senior leader of SP told Akhilesh Yadav that Mayawati will never form an alliance with SP, to which Akhilesh reportedly replied, “Even that would serve positively for the party in 2019 elections as the voters, particularly the minorities, would shift to the SP."

BSP’s unwillingness to forge an alliance with SP has made Akhilesh rethink about the grand alliance having the BSP in it.

The party is now trying to woo its old members like Beni Prasad Verma who has a strong Kurmi caste voter base. Many of these members were sidelined after the emergence of Akhilesh Yadav as party chief.