New Delhi: Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad said the alliance with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party could not be done as he felt that the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister only wanted Dalit vote bank and not Dalit leaders.
Azad, a Dalit-Bahujan rights activist, said he tried for more than a month to forge an alliance with the Samajwadi Party, but it did not succeed. He accused Akhilesh Yadav of humiliating the people of Bahujan Samaj.
ANI quoted the Bhim Army chief as saying, “After all the discussions, in the end I felt that Akhilesh Yadav does not want Dalits in this alliance, he only wants Dalit vote banks. They humiliated the people of Bahujan Samaj, I tried for 1 month 3 days, but the alliance could not happen.
Azad on Friday posted a tweet on a possible alliance with the Samajwadi Party, saying it is not easy to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) without strength and unity. He said that it is the responsibility of the coalition leader to respect and take care of the representation of all sections of the society. “Today the Dalit class in UP expects Akhilesh Yadav to shoulder this responsibility,” he wrote.
Several BJP MLAs and two UP ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government, mostly backward caste leaders, joined the SP on Friday during a virtual rally in the presence of Akhilesh Yadav.
All the MLAs, in identical resignation letters, alleged that the current government has neglected the interests of the backward and downtrodden.
After the virtual rally at the Lucknow office of the SP, the Uttar Pradesh Police registered an FIR against the party for violating the Corona Virus Disease (Covid-19) protocol.
first published:Jan. 15, 2022, 12:07 p.m.
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