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Updated: May 20, 2020 21:55 IST

A day after the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was formally suspended, SP national president Akhilesh Yadav likened the politics of alliance with scientific experiments and said that “sometimes experiments do fail.”

Speaking to the media on the SP’s course of action after meeting Muslim community members on Eid, Yadav said, “I have been a science student. There are experiments, and experiments don’t always succeed. But then one gets to know one’s weaknesses.

“What I had said for Mayawati ji at the first joint press conference, I still say that ‘Mera samman unka samman hai (my honour is her honour)’.

As far as gathbandhan or fighting elections alone is concerned, political roads are wide open for all. I will consult my party leaders on our future strategy.”

On Tuesday, both Mayawati and Yadav – he has a Master’s in environmental engineering from Sydney -- announced that the grand alliance forged to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general elections was suspended as of now and that both parties would contest the upcoming by-elections for 11 assembly seats separately.

The first hint of the mahabathbandhan – it won only 15 LS seats compared to the BJP’s 62 in Uttar Pradesh – coming apart came from BSP national president Mayawati on Monday.

On Tuesday, she formally announced that the BSP would go it alone in the by-polls but hinted that alliance doors would still remain open in case Yadav managed to revive his party. “But if he fails to re-activate his party, it is better that we go separate ways,” she said.

WATCH | Mayawati announces break from SP alliance, will fight alone in UP bypolls

Also read:‘If our paths are different…’: Akhilesh Yadav’s first response to Mayawati breakup

Of the 15 seats that the mahagathbandhanwon in Uttar Pradesh, the BSP won 10 seats and the SP 5. The third partner, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), drew a blank. The BSP, which won no seats in the 2014 general elections, was the only gainer from the alliance. The SP tally remained the same in both elections. But Mayawati chose to part ways, blaming the SP for failing to transfer Yadav votes to mahagathbandhan.

Professor SK Dwivedi, a political analyst and the retired head of the department of political science said: “If it was an experiment that failed...Now move on. I had said several times before that a friendship with Mayawati does not last. The 2019 alliance was an opportunistic alliance between ideologically different entities.”