While the Bahujan Samaj Party has given a cold shoulder to any proposal for a tie-up, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party are in the final stages for finalising nitty-gritty of an alliance
With elections to the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Assembly set for February, political parties are now scrambling for alliances and selection of candidates. On Saturday, the Election Commission had shot down the Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s game plan to force the Assembly elections in April by hurriedly getting declared the school examinations in February and March.
While the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has given a cold shoulder to any proposal for a tie-up, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) are in the final stages for finalising nitty-gritty of an alliance. Sources in both the parties said that despite a lengthy meeting between Congress poll strategist Prashant Kishor and SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav early this week, the number and choice of seats leaving for potential partners was still an issue. They said that Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar was brokering a deal between the two parties, after he successfully sailed the Grand Alliance in Bihar to victory last year.
Earlier talks between the Congress and the SP had failed as the Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi didn’t want to contest less than 100-120 seats out of the total of 403. But the SP was not willing to part more than 50 seats. In the SP, Akhilesh has been a strong votary of an alliance, but he was also keen to push elections to April, in order to delink polls in his state with other poll bound states like Punjab, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand and also to negotiate an alliance threadbare. But the EC exercising its powers cancelled the Class X and XII Board exams fixed by the UP Secondary Education Board from February 16 and directed it to declare the new schedule only after a prior approval of the state’s chief electoral officer (CEO). The EC’s decision, therefore, indicates that it is all set to hold the Assembly elections in February in all five states.
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