No alliance with Apna Dal (K) for Lok Sabha election: Akhilesh Yadav

Samajwadi Party does not have any alliance with the Krishna Patel-led Apna Dal (Kamerawadi)

The Samajwadi Party does not have any alliance with the Krishna Patel-led Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) for the 2024 parliamentary election, SP president Akhilesh Yadav said on Thursday.

His declaration comes a day after the Apna Dal (K) unilaterally announced that it would contest three Lok Sabha seats as part of the Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) in Uttar Pradesh. The SP is the largest member of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc in U.P.

“We had an alliance with Apna Dal (Kameravadi) in 2022, which has now broken,” Mr. Yadav told reporters at the party’s State office in Lucknow. The Apna Dal (K) had been part of the SP-led Opposition alliance in the 2022 Assembly election in U.P., with its leader Pallavi Patel elected from Sirathu on the SP symbol, defeating the sitting U.P. Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.

On Wednesday, the Apna Dal (K) said it would contest the Phulpur, Mirzapur, and Kaushambi Lok Sabha seats under the INDIA umbrella. The SP, however, called the announcement unilateral. The SP and Congress have already signed off on a seat-sharing arrangement for the INDIA bloc in U.P.’s 80 Lok Sabha constituencies, whereby the SP will contest 63 seats, leaving 17 for the Congress.

In his interaction with the media, Mr. Yadav targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for weakening democracy in India, calling on the electorate to vote the ruling party out of power. “If the BJP is defeated, the country and its constitutional, democratic values will be saved. People have to vote carefully. If the BJP loses the upcoming election, youth will get jobs and farmers will get Minimum Support Prices (MSP),” the SP president said.

Mr. Yadav also welcomed the Lok Dal, led by former MLC Sunil Singh, into the Opposition fold. “There has been no bigger leader than [the late former Prime Minister and Lok Dal founder] Chaudhary Charan Singh ji for providing rights to the farmers in the country. We all will work together to follow his path; we hope that BJP will be defeated from Uttar Pradesh in the coming times. We share a close bonding with Sunil Singh ji and his family,” added the SP president.