The Samajwadi Party will be supporting the candidate of its new ally Bahujan Samaj Party in the upcoming Legislative Council elections in Uttar Pradesh, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav announced on Wednesday.
The elections to 13 seats of the Legislative Council will be held on April 26 and results will be declared the same day.
The SP holds the majority of the 61 seats in the 100-member UP Legislative Council, while the BSP has nine seats. The ruling party in the state, BJP, has only 13 seats.
The SP and BSP that set aside their differences to ally during the bypolls for Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur, struck gold by defeating BJP in both the seats, the former being the home turf of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and a BJP stronghold.
Meanwhile, BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday visited Uttar Pradesh to take stock of the preparations for the upcoming Legislative Council polls in the state and meet the party's 'sulking' alliance partners.
The BJP national president, who took a day off from the Karnataka Assembly campaign, is understood to have taken a look at the names of probable party candidates for the Legislative Council polls.
The ruling BJP is certain of winning at least 11 seats, going by its brute majority in the state legislative Assembly.
Shah began his tour by garlanding the statue of Jyotibha Phule, sending a message that the saffron party did not want to keep the dalits at an arms distance at a time when the Lok Sabha polls were barely a few months away.
"With party MPs Savitri Bai Phoole, Ashok Dohrey, Chhotelal and Yashwant Singh virtually raising a banner of revolt against Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Shah had a long discussion with the chief minister at the latter's 5 Kalidas Marg residence to assuage their hurt sentiments. The parliamentarians had written about their discontent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi," a senior party leader said.
UP deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma and state BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present during the discussion, he said.
The party leader said the Lok Sabha bypoll debacles of Gorakhpur and Phulpur also figured in the meeting.
The outburst of the four parliamentarians and another BJP MP Udit Raj came at a time when the country witnessed a public outcry against the Supreme Court's order on the SC/ST Act, which the dalit leaders said was an attempt to "dilute" the law.
After facing strident criticism from the opposition on dalit issues, the BJP is also grappling with a rising voice of discontent among its own MPs belonging to the scheduled castes in Uttar Pradesh.
BJP Lok Sabha members from Etawah and Nagina, Ashok Kumar Dohrey and Yashwant Singh, respectively, are the latest to join their dalit colleagues from the party to criticise the UP government.
In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dohrey had alleged that the dalits and tribals across the country, especially in Uttar Pradesh, were being framed by the police in false cases after the protests, leading to growing insecurity among them.
Yashwant Singh, meanwhile, had said that nothing had been done for dalits in the last four years of the BJP government.
Party insiders also said that the BJP's sulking ally, SBSP leader O.P. Rajbhar, who is also a cabinet minister, presented his case before Shah.
Rajbhar told reporters, "I raised the issue of quota within quota for the most backward classes. Apart from this, discrepancies pertaining to ration cards, housing, toilets, pensions and scholarship were also discussed.”
The Rajbhar-led Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) has four MLAs in the state Assembly. He had threatened to boycott last month's Rajya Sabha biennial election.
Apna Dal (Sonelal) leader Ashish Patel also met the BJP president.
"The meeting with the BJP chief was held in a very cordial atmosphere. We spoke for adequate representation of dalits and backward classes at police stations and Tehsil offices, and we were told that our demands will be looked into," he said.