Despite Mayawati, Akhilesh rebuffs, Congress claims Opposition unity still intact

As both the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) announced to contest upcoming Assembly elections on their own, the talks of the opposition unity failing apart started making rounds in the political corridors.

The ruling BJP mocked the Congress party saying the coalition was not in its DNA and claimed that the so-called ‘unity’ among the opposition parties against the BJP stood exposed.

The Congress party, however, feels the other way and its spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala denied all the claims and expressed hope to have an alliance at “some stage” with Mayawati.

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“These claims that the opposition unity is falling apart are baseless. The Lok Sabha election is still a bit far away. The number of seats demanded by the BSP in Chhattisgarh was not suiting the electoral seat sharing requirement,” Surjewala said.

“But we hope to have an alliance with Mayawati at some other stage,” he added.

The Congress leader was optimistic that the Opposition parties would join hands together at the national level as far as the 2019 Lok Sabha elections were concerned.

"We are fighting against the Left in Kerala but on various issues, at the national level we have set aside our differences and have worked together,” he added.

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The statement from Surjewala came after Akhilesh Yadav’s SP gave up to the “waiting” and decided to go solo in 2018 mid-term elections.

"We have waited too long for the Congress. How much longer should we wait? We will now consult the Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP), with which we had an alliance, and the BSP for the coming assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh," Akhilesh was quoted as saying by PTI.