BJP alarmed as SP, BSP hold joint protest in Varanasi

The proposed alliance between Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party is yet to formally take shape in Uttar Pradesh, but at the ground level, party workers have started working together, projecting the outline of the alliance that is likely to emerge in this most politically sensitive state.

The first indication that party workers were coordinating was visible in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Parliamentary constituency Varanasi on Tuesday, when SP and BSP corporators held an impromptu agitation against BJP Mayor Mridula Jaiswal. The agitation began in Varanasi’s Shahid Udyan. Soon workers of both SP and BSP joined their corporators. In no time, this agitation turned into a rally. Then Congress workers also joined them, presenting a united face of Opposition.

Ribu Srivastava of Samajwadi Party, who led this agitation, said that it all started when SP corporators alleged partiality in disbursement of funds. “Soon BSP corporators joined us. We came out of the Nagar Nigam and started raising slogans at Shahid Udyan against the Mayor. Soon the party workers of SP and BSP too joined us and from a handful we were now in hundreds”, she said.

“This agitation is the trailer of what can be expected in near future. The incident is a clear indication that workers of BSP and SP are ready to gel together, forgetting their differences. No call was given by any top leader of either party, still workers came and staged a boisterous agitation,”Srivastava told National Herald.

Senior Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav said that the acrimony between SP and BSP over the infamous state guest house incident is a matter of the past. As both parties are walking hand in hand, what is relevant now is to achieve the larger national objective of defeating the BJP, which has proved detrimental to both the state and the nation,” said Yadav.

Yadav said Mayawati had herself given a clean chit to Akhilesh Yadav and absolved him of the responsibility for the June 1995 guest house incident, maintaining that when that incident happened, Akhilesh was nowhere in politics.

Yadav said that his party’s alliance with BSP would wipe out the BJP from Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll. He said that BJP was unnerved by the coming together of the two arch rivals and was now digging into the past of  both parties, aiming to spread misinformation and confusion among their cadre.