Lucknow: Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav will not attend the swearing-in of newly elected Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, a party leader said on Friday – the second major opposition leader after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to do so.
Siddaramaiah will take oath on May 20 – a development that comes a week after the Congress party won a decisive 135 out of 224 seats in the Karnataka Assembly.
Congress allies like Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) will reportedly attend the ceremony in Bengaluru.
However, SP’s chief spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhary confirmed that Akhilesh would not attend the event due to “outline programs in Gorakhpur and Ballia”.
“Akhilesh Yes Other programs will not be able to attend the ceremony due to pre-scheduled dates. He will be in Gorakhpur tomorrow (Saturday),” he told ThePrint, adding that the party would send a letter of thanks to the Congress for the invitation.
The SP chief’s decision to skip the function comes in the backdrop of his indication that the party is considering fielding candidates from Amethi and Rae Bareli – two seats considered Congress strongholds.
SP sources claim that it is the party’s attempt to avoid rumors of an alliance with former ally Congress.
As per the party’s official programme, Akhilesh is scheduled to visit Tanda village in Gorakhpur on Saturday, where he will pay homage to former UP minister and stalwart Hari Shankar Tiwari, who passed away on Tuesday.
Tiwari, a prominent Brahmin leader from eastern UP, was the first politician to win an election from inside prison in 1985. that six-Time MLA from Chillupar Assembly Constituency.
Throughout his political career, Tiwari enjoyed good relations with leaders cutting across party lines, even serving as a minister in successive state governments under Chief Ministers Rajnath Singh (BJP), Ram Prakash Gupta Did. (BJP), Mulayam Singh (SP) and Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party).
His sons Kushal Tiwari and Vijay Shankar Tiwari and his cousin Ganesh Pandey had joined the SP after being ousted by the BSP in December 2021 – just before the assembly elections in the state.
It is important to note that Akhilesh’s decision came hours after the Trinamool Congress’s confirmation That its chief Mamata Banerjee will not attend the event. Instead, the party will be represented by TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar.
SP-Congress dynamics
Over the past few months, the SP chief has made several statements about fielding the two Lok Sabha constituencies, traditionally considered Congress bastions, considering “the sentiments of local party workers”.
While Rae Bareli has been a bastion of several leaders of the Gandhi family – such as former prime minister Indira Gandhi, her husband Feroze Gandhi and eventually Sonia – Amethi was a Congress bastion from 1967 to 2019.
While Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lost from Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019, his mother and former party president Sonia currently represents Rae Bareli.
The first indication that the SP chief was considering fielding candidates from Amethi and Rae Bareli came at its national executive meeting in March.
At the meeting, Akhilesh reportedly said: “I was in Amethi recently. Our party helps the Congress to win the elections on both these seats, but when injustice is done to the SP workers, the Congress does not utter a word. Our leaders say that we should contest from these seats. We will talk to our party workers and take a decision.
After this there were reports in the media that the SP chief had deputed senior leaders deploy Booth committees in Amethi and Rae Bareli Where the party has traditionally avoided fielding candidates against the Congress in March.
A senior SP leader who did not want to be named He told ThePrint that there was pressure on the party “to field candidates, especially in Amethi” from local leaders.
But another leader told ThePrint that there was still some time left for the 2024 general elections. The leader also did not rule out an alliance with the Congress.
“There is still a long road before the elections. In politics you have to keep your options open. However, with this step, Akhilesh Yes Wants to avoid any talks of an alliance with the Congress in UP for the time being,” said the leader.
Significantly, Akhilesh also did denied To be a part of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodi Yatra’ last December. Party leaders had even then rejected the SP’s attempt to avoid any talks of an alliance with the Congress before the 2024 elections.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
This is an updated version of this report
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