Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal join hands for 2 UP byelections

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) have joined hands to contest the byelections to Kairana Lok Sabha seat and the Noorpur Assembly seat in Bijnore district, scheduled to be held on May 28.

The pact between the two parties was sealed after a three-hour lunch meeting between SP president Akhilesh Yadav and RLD vice-president Jayant Chaudhary.

According to sources, the RLD will contest the Kairana Lok Sabha seat that has fallen vacant following the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh while SP will contest the Noorpur Assembly seat that fell vacant after the death of BJP MLA Lokendra Singh.

The RLD will field Tabassum Hasan in Kairana while SP candidate in Noorpur will be Naaemul Hasan.

Both the parties feel that it should be easy to defeat the BJP in a one-to-one fight in both the constituencies in western UP.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has already announced that it will remain neutral and will not contest the bypolls.

The SP will now make an attempt to persuade BSP president Mayawati to announce her support for the SP-RLD alliance.

The Congress, meanwhile, is maintaining a studied silence on its role in the by-elections. Sources, however, claim that the party was unlikely to field its candidates and would support the SP-RLD alliance.

The Congress had faced a humiliating defeat in the byelections in Phulpur and Gorakhpur in March when it had put up its own candidates.

The Opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh feel that the upcoming byelections to Lok Sabha and Assembly seats are crucial since they would set the mood for the general elections early next year.

“We have already made a statement with our party’s victory in Gorak-hpur and Phulpur and if we wrest the Kairana and Noorpur seats from the BJP. The agenda for the Lok Sabha elections will be set and the writing on the wall will be oust BJP,” said SP spokesman Sunil Singh Sajan.