Akhilesh welcome to Didi, 0 seats to Congress

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to be offered a partnership by Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav. The SP politico on Friday hinted that he is considering an alternate political party to partner with and said that he is open to teaming up withTrinamool Congress.

Yadav - busy building a platform to challenge the BJP in the 2022 UP Assembly election - said the ruling party would be “wiped out” in Uttar Pradesh like they were by Banerjee in the Bengal polls. “I welcome her. The way she wiped out the BJP in Bengal... the people of Uttar Pradesh will wipe out the BJP,” Yadav said in Jhansi, where he was holding a yatra’

“We will speak about it when the time is right,” he told the reporter who asked him that question.

The former UP chief minister also wrote off the Congress. “The public will refuse them... and they will get 0 seats in the upcoming election,” he said, hitting back at Priyanka Gandhi Vadra for her jibes. On Thursday, at a rally in western UP’s Moradabad, Gandhi Vadra questioned Mr Yadav’s absence from Lakhimpur during protests after four farmers were crushed to death under a jeep belonging to the son of Union Minister Ajay Mishra. Mr Mishra’s son in is jail for his alleged role in the murders. The two parties worked together in 2017 but “we did not have a good experience”, Akhilesh Yadav told NDTV this month, adding, “UP has rejected the Congress.”

At Jhansi, Mr Yadav also took a shot at the BJP over the Purvanchal Expressway inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He claimed the BJP was taking credit for projects initiated by his party. “If Samajwadi Party can build the Expressway in 22 months why did BJP take 4.5 years to do the same work? This is because they don’t want to work for the welfare of people in UP,” he declared.

khilesh Yadav is stitching together a “rainbow” alliance ahead of the UP election, relying on an assortment of regional parties in the eastern part of the state and votes from farmers in the west.

The buzz of a link-up between him and the Trinamool comes on the back of both outfits taking swipes at the Congress, seen by many as losing its place as de facto leader of the opposition. The two - the SP and the Trinamool - also exchanged friendly comments in the build-up to the Bengal election, with Yadav saying his party would campaign on the Trinamool’s behalf. Banerjee, meanwhile, has been canvassing converts - many have joined from the Congress - since defeating the BJP in Bengal.