Days after publicly saying he wanted to see Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister again, Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav dropped a bombshell again on Thursday when he slammed his son and party president Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to forge an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party for the Lok Sabha elections.
He said the Bhartiya Janata Party was better placed.
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Addressing party leaders and workers at the SP headquarters in Lucknow, Mulayam said the SP-BSP alliance was wrong. He said he had toiled hard to bring the party to its zenith. But after Akhilesh entered into an alliance with BSP president Mayawati, SP’s seats were halved.
“The SP is very strong and it is capable of contesting all the 80 Lok Sabha seats on its own,” he said.
Without naming his son , the SP patron said the party was being weakened by its own leaders. He added the SP had formed a government thrice in Uttar Pradesh on its own. Although Mulayam made it a point to remind the party workers that he was not playing politics on the issue but merely stating his point of view.
Mulayam bared his heart when he said that though he had been made the party patron no responsibility had been assigned to him. Akhilesh entered into an alliance with Mayawati without his being in the know of it.
He said he was more experienced than Akhilesh and could have advised him better. But he was completely ignored in the goings-on to the extent that he was not even asked from where he would contest the Lok Sabha polls. He decried the falling representation of women in the party.
Expressing his angst at the reduction in the seat share Mulayam said it will prove detrimental for the SP in Uttar Pradesh.
“Time was when no one even mentioned the Congress or the BJP. But things now stand changed,” he said, adding that the uncertainty over the names of the party’s candidates is likely to prove advantageous to the BJP.
He said the BJP is ahead in campaigning and asked Akhilesh to name his party’s candidates.
Within hours of Mulayam condemning the alliance, a press release was issued by the BSP finalising the seat share between the two parties for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
The release carried the signatures of both Akhilesh and Mayawati.
Accordingly, 37 seats have fallen in the SP’s kitty and 38 in the BSP’s. The seat share of SP-BSP adds to 75.
While the Congress has been left out of the poll alliance, the SP-BSP as announced earlier will not be fielding any candidate in Rae Bareli and Amethi. Three seats, Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar and Mathura, have been given to the Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Significantly, Mulayam’s slamming of his son came on a day when Akhilesh held a press conference with Patidar leader Hardik Patel. The SP president had introduced Patel to the SP patriarch.