Bihar Assembly Election : Samajwadi Party shuts the door on grand alliance, Bihar Assembly Election 2015 ,Bihar Polls ,BJP,Grand Alliance in Bihar ,Lalu Prasad Yadav ,Mulayam Singh Yadav ,Narendra Modi ,Nitish Kumar,RJD-Congress-JD(U) , SAMAJWADI PARTY
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- Category: Bihar Political News
- Last Updated: Tuesday, 08 September 2015 15:37
Bihar Assembly Election : Samajwadi Party shuts the door on grand alliance, Bihar Assembly Election 2015 ,Bihar Polls ,BJP,Grand Alliance in Bihar ,Lalu Prasad Yadav ,Mulayam Singh Yadav ,Narendra Modi ,Nitish Kumar,RJD-Congress-JD(U) ,SAMAJWADI PARTY,Ramchandra Singh Yadav
The party will contest all 243 seats independently in the upcoming assembly polls
“We will be contesting all 243 seats independently,” announced SP Bihar unit president Ramchandra Singh Yadav while addressing the media in Patna.
According to party insiders, the SP will not be allying with either the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), or the Congress when Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls in early 2017.
The SP announced its exit from the alliance on 3 September, citing the meagre seats allocated to it in Bihar as the reason. The party had, however, hinted at the possibility of aligning with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Left parties.
The SP had initially demanded 27 seats from Bihar chief minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad, but the constituents of the Janata Parivar refused to pay heed. Later, the SP reduced its demand to 17 seats and was finally prepared to accept 10 seats. It was offered only five seats.
“The Janata Parivar insulted us in front of the Congress. The Congress was never a part of the alliance, still it was given 40 seats without the permission of Mulayam Singh Yadav, and we on the other hand were given merely five. Our decision to contest independently is therefore our way of keeping the Samajwadi Party alive in Bihar,” said SP leader and Rajya Sabha member Naresh Agarwal.
Party chief Sharad Yadav and Lalu Prasad are still trying to convince Mulayam Singh Yadav to return to the alliance. “The talks are going on; wait for 48 hours. These are pressure tactics to get more seats in Bihar,” said a senior JD(U) leader.
The SP’s electoral record in Bihar is far from impressive. In 2010, the party failed to win a single seat out of the 146 seats it had contested independently. During the previous assembly elections, the SP had only managed to get a 0.55% vote share, a little over 160,000 votes in all 146 constituencies.
“The SP has no identity in Bihar, and even if it somehow manages to win one or two seats, it will be a big achievement for them,” said Sachidanand Sharma, a political science professor at Patna University.
src:livemint