New Delhi: Reacting on the SP and BSP tie-up, BJP today said that both the parties came together for their survival, and not for the country or Uttar Pradesh.
Senior BJP leader and Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said
“The SP and BSP have allied neither for the country nor for Uttar Pradesh,
but for their survival. They know they cannot fight Modi on their own and their
opposition to him is the sole base of their alliance”.
He also downplayed suggestions that the former arch rivals
coming together will have any impact on the parliamentary polls, saying
elections are not about mathematics but chemistry.
Prasad made these remarks just after BSP chief Mayawati and
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav announced their alliance in Uttar
Pradesh for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, sharing 38 seats each out of the state’s
80 parliamentary constituencies.
The parties kept the Congress out of the alliance, but said
they will not field candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli, represented by
Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
The alliance left two more seats for
smaller allies.
BSP chief Mayawati at a joint press
conference with SP president Akhilesh Yadav said, “This…will rob
‘guru-chela’ — Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah — of
their sleep.”