SP-BSP alliance will remain strong into 2019 elections; or will it?

Akhilesh Yadav’s party- Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayawati’s party Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had joined forces to pull down BJP in the Uttar Pradesh by-polls. Ans the alliance had won in the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister’s bastion Gorkhapur.

But will the SP-BSP alliance continue into the 2019 elections?

Apparently yes, according to the SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. Stoked by the successful election results, Yadav has decided to continue the alliance even is he has to sit in the passenger seat.

“Our alliance with BSP will continue, in 2019 even if we have to give up a few seats we will do it. We have to ensure the BJP is defeated,” Akhilesh Yadav said at a public meeting on Sunday in Mainpuri.

Last month, an opposition-backed candidate bagged the Kairana parliamentary seat in the third setback in a row for the ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayawati’s BSP had joined forces to snatch two BJP strongholds earlier — Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s Gorakhpur and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya’s Phulpur.

The victories have been taken by the opposition as a workable template for a similar alliance to take on the BJP in 2019.

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However, it is clear that the SP-BSP relationship will be high-maintenance.

Right after the Gorakhpur-Phulpur victories, the Rajya Sabha elections signalled a bump in the newfound friendship as Mayawati, challenged by the BJP in the seat her party was contesting, failed to get her candidate into the upper house.

While insisting the alliance remained strong, she also implied that SP lawmakers should have supported her party man at the cost of their candidate.

When Mayawati said at her party’s leadership meet recently that she would go for partnerships only if the BSP’s share of seats was respectable, it stumped the SP somewhat.

The BJP seized on the comments.

“Bua (Mayawati) and Babua (Akhilesh Yadav) will finish off with fighting among themselves. This isn’t an alliance based on issues. An issue-less alliance never works. They will be finished before the election (2019) comes,” UP minister Swami Prasad Maurya of the BJP said on Sunday.