Lucknow: Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L) national president Shivpal Yadav on Friday said that he would never go with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and could not rule out possibilities of a tie-up with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “This time we will contest to win (some seats),” said Shivpal, talking about the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
He was speaking to newspersons at the party’s state headquarters here.
When asked about speculations that he would contest the Mainpuri LS seat in 2024 with the support of the BJP under the BJP’s agenda of winning all the 80 LS seats in the state, he said: “I would want Netaji (Mulayam) to contest the seat”.
Mainpuri seat is currently represented by SP founder and chief patron Mulayam Singh Yadav but there is speculation he may not contest this time due to health reasons.
“I wish him to be healthy and to re-contest the seat. If he doesn’t contest, then let’s see how things turn out,” Shivpal said.
When asked about speculations that surfaced some time back that he might join hands with the Congress in UP and become the Congress’ state president, Shivpal said: “That chapter was closed quite some time back.” He refused to elaborate.
Shivpal, who contested the Jaswant Nagar assembly seat on SP ticket under his party’s tie-up with the latter in the 2022 UP assembly polls, snapped ties with the SP in July following an ultimatum from it. Before this, he had voted for the BJP-led NDA’s presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu in the presidential polls.
{{/usCountry}}Shivpal, who contested the Jaswant Nagar assembly seat on SP ticket under his party’s tie-up with the latter in the 2022 UP assembly polls, snapped ties with the SP in July following an ultimatum from it. Before this, he had voted for the BJP-led NDA’s presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu in the presidential polls.
{{/usCountry}}“We have wasted five years hoping for good ties with the SP, but not anymore. Now, we will go full throttle in strengthening our party. We will contest the 2024 polls and before that the urban local bodies polls”, said Shivpal.
To note, Shivpal was an important part of the SP with the founder Mulayam Singh Yadav since the party’s inception in 1992. However, during the SP rule during 2012-2017, Shivpal and the then chief minister Akhilesh Yadav fell out. Shivpal formed the PSP-L in 2018.
Along with ex-MP, ex-MLA, and former UP minister DP Yadav, he formed the ‘Yadukul Renaissance Mission’--an outfit to unite Yadavs and other associated castes and struggle for their welfare.
When asked if DP Yadav, who also is the president of the Rashtriya Parivartan Dal, would now be a political ally, Shivpal said: “Yes. We are together now and efforts will be made to rope in more allies”.
When asked about the 2024 LS polls, Shivpal said: “We will contest the polls. Last time (in 2019), we contested 48 seats (won none). But this time we might contest more seats, though certainly not all the seats as we are new. But things would become clear when the polls are a year away. It’s still roughly two years to the LS polls”.
Shivpal said that now he would never have any association with the SP in any form. “We got betrayed by the SP many times. Not anymore. About any possible association with the BJP, time will tell. It’s premature now,” he said.
He said that he did not want to talk about Akhilesh Yadav much, but added: “The SP certainly would have been in power in the state had he listened to me. I had told him to give 100 seats and field SP candidates on 300. I was not even made a star campaigner. Had he made me a star campaigner and assigned me a helicopter, then I would have travelled to every single constituency in the state and would have got 20,000 extra votes for the SP candidates in each and every constituency.”