SP-BSP cannot take on Modi alone, alliance only for their survival: BJP

The BJP Saturday said the SP and the BSP came together for their survival, and not for the country or Uttar Pradesh, and downplayed suggestions that the alliance will have a major impact on the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. “The SP and BSP have allied neither for the country nor for Uttar Pradesh. But for their survival. They know they cannot fight (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi on their own and their opposition to him is the sole base of their alliance,” senior BJP leader and Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters on the sidelines of the party’s ongoing National Council Meeting at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan.

Prasad also rejected claims made by BSP chief Mayawati and SP president Akhilesh Yadav that their coming together will have a major impact on the parliamentary poll results. “Elections are not about mathematics but chemistry,” he said.

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Prasad made these remarks just after Mayawati and 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. BJP leader and UP Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya termed the SP-BSP joining hands as an “alliance of corruption and goondaism”.

“And let me make it clear that people are solidly behind Modi and the BJP will do better than it did in 2014. The backward community is backing Modi,” he said at the national convention.

Another BJP leader and party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi also played down the SP-BSP alliance and expressed confidence of BJP's victory even if all parties united.

"Both parties are contesting together just to save their political ground. These parties have blamed each other of murder in the past. Anyway, its their choice. We are confident. Even if all parties come together, we will still win," Trivedi said.

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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. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won 71 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.