In a first, Shivpal Yadav counts Congress as possible ally in Uttar Pradesh

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Updated: Dec 27, 2018 07:46 IST

Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSPL) founder and president Shivpal Yadav has said his party is open to allying with the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) or the Congress, whichever comes forward with an offer. He made the statement in Bareilly on Tuesday night.

While Shivpal has repeatedly demanded his party’s inclusion in the proposed SP-BSP alliance on suitable terms, this is the first time he has mentioned the Congress in this context.

Shivpal’s reference to the Congress comes even as the SP and the BSP have been indicating an unwillingness to take the Congress on board and shown a preference for stitching together a ‘non-BJP, non-Congress’ alliance.

“Without taking the PSPL on board, no alliance will be able to defeat the BJP. The PSPL will contest polls to defeat the BJP,” he said. Shivpal said his party had the capability to contest elections in all the 75 districts of UP (80 Lok Sabha seats and 403 UP assembly seats).

Shivpal is Samajwadi Party MLA from Jaswant Nagar and former minister.

He floated a political front, the Samajwadi Secular Morcha (SSM), in August and a political party, the PSPL, in October after a protracted political feud with his nephew Akhilesh Yadav, who is the SP national president.

Talking about his ‘gathbandhan (alliance) skills’, Shivpal Yadav said: “I played an instrumental role in bringing (former Prime Minister) HD Deve Gowda, the Ansari brothers, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Yadav and others on one platform ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2015 Bihar assembly polls. It led to the formation of the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar.”

The alliance that Shivpal talked about had collapsed as Mulayam had pulled out of it over the issue of allocation of inadequate seats to the SP in the Bihar polls.

On the Ram temple issue in Ayodhya, Shivpal asked why was it that the BJP remembered it ahead of the polls.

He reiterated the temple should not be built at the disputed site.

Instead, it could be built anywhere on the other bank of the Saryu river in Ayodhya, he suggested.