BJP Leader Thanks Samajwadi Party's "Congress-Mukt Bharat" Move For UP Bypoll
NDTV
Samajwadi Party boss Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday confirmed the SP would field candidates for all nine seats and that they would contest on his party's symbol.
The Congress' decision to not contest by-polls for any of the nine Uttar Pradesh Assembly seats next month - instead leaving them to the Samajwadi Party, to maximise a faltering INDIA bloc's chance of victory - has drawn jibes and proclamations of the alliance's break-up from the ruling BJP.
The BJP's state unit spokesperson, Rakesh Tripathi, claimed the Samajwadi Party had extracted "revenge" for the Madhya Pradesh and Haryana elections, in which the Congress had snubbed its ally's request for seat-sharing; the Congress was eventually thumped by the BJP in both states.
Tripathi also threw out a wrestling reference, declaring the Congress had been 'thrown and pinned to the mat'. "The INDI Alliance has been broken into pieces," the BJP leader claimed, "The SP is making the BJP's 'Congress-mukt Bharat' (an India free of the Congress) slogan a reality."
