Humiliated Samajwadi Party pulls out of Bihar alliance, to fight polls alone
NEW DELHI: In a major blow to the ‘Janata Parivar’ – the grand alliance floated by six parties to counter BJP in Bihar – Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party on Thursday walked out of it and announced that it will contest the crucial assembly elections in the state alone.
Addressing a press conference in the national capital, SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav said, “SP Parliamentary Board has decided to contest Bihar elections independently.”
We will contest the elections alone with full might and win more seats than we have been allotted by the alliance leaders, Yadav said.
“If need be we will speak to some other parties for support, but that is not on the table as of now,” the senior SP leader added.Stating reasons for the party’s decision to go alone in the crucial polls, Yadav said, “We were not consulted about seat sharing and felt insulted by Lalu and Nitish Kumar’s tactics.”
The SP leader, however, refused to take blame for the spilt in the grand alliance of six parties announced by their top leaders to counter BJP in Bihar, and said, “You people (media) decide who is at fault, who am I to comment on that.”
Upset over the allocation of five seats in Bihar by RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav skipped a Mahagathbandan (grand alliance) rally on August 30 in Patna.
RJD chief and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav had recently announced five seats for the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the grand alliance for the Bihar Assembly polls.“We will give five seats to Samajwadi Party in grand alliance,” Lalu had said.
At a joint press conference of Janata Dal (United), RJD and Congress on August 12, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had announced seat sharing among partners of grand alliance.The RJD and the JD (U) had reserved 100 seats each, leaving 40 to the Congress and three to the NCP.
Peeved over denial of seats, the SP had staged a dharna for four days that ended after the intervention of party General Secretary Kiranmoy Nanda.The experiment of unification of the Janata Parivar was undertaken with six parties — SP, JD(U), RJD, INLD, SJP and JD(S). The experiment ran into troubled waters after SP’s national general secretary Ramgopal Yadav put his foot down over any kind of merger or formation of a political outfit initially.
The SP leadership was reportedly upset with the seat-sharing arrangement done by Nitish and Lalu and the cold shoulder given to the party’s state leaders which are the main reasons for its decision to go alone in the polls.
