Mayawati roadblock for Mahagathbandhan? BSP to contest on all Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh

This comes after the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, wherein the BSP and the Congress fought separately, but the former extended its support to the grand old party after the declaration of the results.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) seems to have put the plans for a grand alliance of opposition parties on hold by declaring that the party would contest on all seats in Madhya Pradesh during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. According to an announcement by party’s vice president Ramji Gautam, the BSP is preparing to contest on all 29 Lok Sabha seats of Madhya Pradesh.

Notably, this comes shortly after the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, wherein the BSP and the Congress fought separately, but the former extended its support to the grand old party after the declaration of the results.

Ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, Mayawati had in October declared that she would not get into pre-poll alliance with the Congress party, blaming leaders like former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh. She had, however, said that the intentions of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi for a BSP-Congress alliance was “honest”.

But after the Congress party fell short of majority by winning 114 seats in Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, Mayawati extended support to ensure that a Congress-led government was formed in the state. She had said that the BSP had decided to support the Congress party so that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could be kept out of power.

This comes even as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has said that talks are on among all opposition parties for a Mahagathbandhan ahead of the Lok Sabha elections 2019. He also suggested that seat sharing discussions were also underway at different levels, saying that parties that are powerful in a particular state would be given more seats in that region.

“All opposition parties have decided to come together and form a Mahagathbandhan. Talks are on for the same. Whichever party is more powerful in a state will be given more number of seats,” the veteran leader wrote on microblogging site Twitter in Marathi.

In another significant political development, Telangana Rashtra Samithi supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday met Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. Following the meeting the Telangana Chief Minister said that soon a “concrete plan” would be formulated.

The TRS chief, who had declared after the Telangana Assembly elections that he would play an active role in national politics, is also slated to meet Mayawati and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. Earlier, he had met Odisha chief minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) supremo Naveen Patnaik.