Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati’s meeting in Delhi for an alliance?

LUCKNOW: Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati have called a joint press conference tomorrow at noon in Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow for what is widely believed to be an announcement of their alliance for the national election due by May.

Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have been in talks for weeks; their meeting in Delhi last week raised a lot of talk over reports that the two had decided on a “gathbandhan” or coalition leaving the Congress out of the equation.

Smaller parties are also likely to be in the alliance. Mainly in 2014, the BJP and its ally Apna Dal managed to win a whopping 73 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats, pitted against the BSP, Samajwadi Party and the Congress.

Last year, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati finally decided to eradiacte their differences and pool in their resources to contest three bypolls and won all. It gave them hope that if they team up  in for good, they can easily pull voters away from the BJP.

They are trying to replicate to replicate their success in the 2019 national polls, it is expected to be a major headache for the BJP, which recently lost three major state elections.