Samajwadi Party president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said his party is willing to play second fiddle to BSP to ensure Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat in 2019 general elections, The Times of India reported.

Akhilesh was in Mainpuri on Sunday for an event and said his party was open to compromising and contesting from select seats if that is what it takes to win against the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections next year.

He said the alliance with BSP will continue, and sacrificing two-four seats is a small price to pay for BJP’s defeat.

Referring to the recent victory in UP bypolls, he said the pre-poll grand alliance was effective and will continue in the future. “Our motive is to win elections against BJP and for this, we are ready to ally with BSP.”

Attacking UP CM Yogi Adityanath, Akhilesh said BJP has lost in every state where Yogi had campaigned during the bypolls. “BJP lost the last four bypolls in UP to a united opposition. They lost the crucial Kairana LS and Noorpur assembly bypolls recently.”

BJP has lost bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, which were the chief minister’s and his deputy Keshav Maurya’s seats, respectively.

He further promised that the toll tax on the Agra-Lucknow expressway will be “removed” for farmers if SP wins the elections.

Mayawati had said in May, for a BSP event, that her party would enter into an alliance with other parties only if they get “a respectable number of seats”. Soon after the remark, there was confusion among SP and BSP workers, which Akhilesh has clarified.

BJP used the opportunity to "warn" Mayawati that trusting Akhilesh was not the right thing to do. She then hit back at BJP saying this will make no difference to the "closeness" of the two parties. “As secular forces are uniting, communal forces like BJP and RSS are becoming increasingly worried,” Mayawati had said.

There had been signs of souring in SP-BSP alliance when SP couldn't help BSP's lone candidate win the Rajya Sabha elections after the Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls.