Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav during a meeting with party workers in Kolkata on March 17, 2023 | Photo Credit: PTI
The Samajwadi Party will maintain equal distance from both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, party president Akhilesh Yadav said on Friday ahead of meeting West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee at her Kolkata residence. Sources indicated that in their meeting both the leaders agreed to such a stand.
“In Bengal, we are with Mamata didi. Right now, our stand is that we want to maintain equal distance from both the BJP and the Congress,” Mr Yadav said. The SP leader is in Kolkata for his party’s national executive meeting and said regional parties would hold the key to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
‘Alliance before elections’
“If you look at the states, most of the MPs who will be elected [in 2024] Neither from the Bharatiya Janata Party nor from the Congress,” Mr. Yadav told reporters in Kolkata in response to a question whether it would be possible to defeat the BJP without the Congress party.
The SP leader said they are “hopeful of an alliance or front taking shape before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls”.
He said, “Everyone wants a chance because no one has done the damage that the BJP has done to the country.”
TMC will contest alone
The SP chief’s remarks are in line with the stand taken by the Trinamool president, who had earlier announced that his party would go it alone in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. On March 3, Ms. Banerjee had said that her party would not forge an alliance with the Congress, adding that there would be an alliance between the Janata and the Trinamool.
Neither of the leaders spoke to mediapersons after the hour-long meeting at the West Bengal Chief Minister’s residence, but sources aware of the developments in the meeting said that both have agreed to maintain an equal distance from the BJP and the Congress.
‘Big Boss’
Hours before the meeting, the Trinamool Congress in a press conference accused the Congress of pretending to be the Big Boss of the opposition parties. Both the Trinamool and SP leadership stayed away from the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Mr Yadav and Ms Banerjee share a warm relationship and SP MP Jaya Bachchan had campaigned for the Trinamool Congress in the 2021 assembly elections. Ms Banerjee herself campaigned for the Samajwadi Party in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
Mr. Yadav said that the aim of the national convention is to increase the number of SP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. “We will contest the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh with the parties with whom we have an alliance,” he said.