Lucknow: Akhilesh Yadav met Mayawati late Friday. The meeting’s purpose was to chalk out details of their grand alliance for upcoming Lok Sabha Elections.
Samajwadi Party (SP) head Akhilesh Yadav reportedly met Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati finalise details of the alliance between the two parties. There was no official announcement yet, but Congress might be left out of this grand alliance.
The alliance, say sources, will have room for smaller parties. The final decision on seat-sharing will be taken after January 15, sources said, adding Chaudhary Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) is likely to get three seats in the grand alliance.
Akhilesh Yadav did not mince his words on finding out that his party’s only lawmaker could not feature in the list of ministers for Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s list of ministers.
“Thanks to the Congress, they did not make our vidhayak (legislator) a minister,” Akhilesh Yadav had told reporters last week. By doing so, the Congress had “cleared the path for Uttar Pradesh,” he had said.
Mayawati, after ruling out a pre-poll alliance with the Congress, had reluctantly extended support to the party after the recent round of assembly elections to keep the BJP out of power in Madhya Pradesh, where the Congress fell a whisker short of a majority.
Snubbed by Akhilesh-Mayawati meet-up, Congress didnot seem very hapy with it.
PL Punia, a Rajya Sabha member from the Congress, today said his party is preparing to contest alone.
“A coalition is not important… Our workers are ready… We have not spoken to anyone about an alliance,” he said.
Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati are expected to meet again next week, sources said.
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Ms Kalinga