It was a rare sight to see SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati sharing the dais. Both the leaders had earlier met in New Delhi to discuss broad parameters of the alliance.
Arch-rivals Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party on Saturday joined hands to contest Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh together, in a key development for the most politically significant state.
At a joint press conference in Lucknow, the parties announced that they would keep the Congress out of the partnership, contesting 38 seats each. They, however, said they would not field candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli, the bastions of Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
They also kept two seats for smaller allies.
Uttar Pradesh sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha which houses a total of 543. In the 2014 general elections, the Modi wave had helped the National Democratic Alliance to win 73 seats (71 BJP and 2 Apna Dal) in the state. The SP won five seats and the Congress two, while the BSP drew a blank.
It was a rare sight to see SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati sharing the dais. Both the leaders had earlier met in New Delhi to discuss broad parameters of the alliance.
The BSP supremo, fighting the battle for her political survival, said she had full confidence that the alliance would defeat BJP, like it did in the Lok Sabha bypolls.
"We will crush the saffron party in the general elections," she said, referring to the BJP's defeat in Phulpur, Gorakhpur and Kairana parliamentary bypolls.
On why the Congress was not included in the alliance, she said that they found the Congress votes don't shift to their parties. "In the past I have seen that our votes get transferred to the Congress, but not vice versa. We do not gain from alliance with Congress, whereas vote transfer is perfect in SP-BSP tie-up," Mayawati said.
The BSP chief also took a dig at Congress, saying that during its rule over decades, poverty, unemployment and corruption grew and there had been scams in defence deals.
Drawing a parallel between the BJP and the Congress, Mayawati said the Congress had imposed the Emergency while the BJP was responsible for an 'undeclared emergency'.
In 1993, SP and BSP had allied to stop BJP's winning spree after the Ram temple movement. But in 1995, BSP, led by Mayawati's mentor Kanshi Ram, withdrew support from the then SP government led by Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Enraged SP leaders barged into the guesthouse where Mayawati was staying and allegedly beat her up and vandalised her room.
When BSP MLAs failed to protect her, BJP MLA Brahm Dutt Dwivedi took her out of the guesthouse to safety. It was then that the BSP joined hands with the BJP to form a government in the state.
On Saturday, Mayawati said: "I am moving past the 1995 incident in the interest of the country and to serve the people, who are upset with the BJP's anti-people policies."
"The SP-BSP tie-up is a natural alliance. Yeh lamba chaleyga, aagey bhi chaleyga, Lok Sabha chunav ke baad, UP Assembly mein bhi yeh sthayee chalega (This will last long, even beyond LS polls and for UP assembly elections)," she said, terming the coming together of the two parties a "political revolution".
Akhilesh Seconded Her
BSP and SP had also tied up during the parliamentary bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur recently, where BSP supported SP candidates who succeeded in winning both the seats — Gorakhpur, vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and Phulpur by his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.
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