Lucknow: Samajwadi Party Akhilesh Yadav will not attend the swearing in of Karnataka chief minister-elect Siddaramaiah, a party leader said Friday — the second prominent opposition leader to do so after West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee.
Siddaramaiah will be sworn in on 20 May — a development that comes a week after the Congress party’s decisive 135-of-224 seat win in Karnataka Assembly.
Congress allies such as Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) will reportedly attend the ceremony in Bengaluru.
However, SP chief spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhary confirmed that Akhilesh would not be attending the event due to “programmes lined up in Gorakhpur and Ballia”.
“Akhilesh ji will not be able to attend the ceremony because of other programmes already lined up. He will be in Gorakhpur tomorrow (Saturday),” he told ThePrint, adding that the party will send a letter of thanks to the Congress for the invitation.
The SP chief’s decision to skip the ceremony comes in the backdrop of his hints that the party was considering fielding candidates from Amethi and Raebareli — two seats considered Congress strongholds.
Sources in SP claim this is the party’s attempt to avoid sparking rumours of a coalition with the Congress, a former ally.
According to the party’s official schedule, Akhilesh is set to visit Tanda village in Gorakhpur Saturday where he will pay his respects to UP former minister and strongman Hari Shankar Tiwari, who died Tuesday.
Tiwari, a prominent Brahmin leader of eastern UP, was the first politician to win an election from inside jail in 1985. He’s a six-time MLA from Chillupar assembly constituency.
Throughout his political career, Tiwari enjoyed a good relationship with leaders cutting across party lines, even serving as a minister in successive state governments under chief ministers Rajnath Singh (BJP), Ram Prakash Gupta (BJP), Mulayam Singh (SP) and Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party).
His sons Kushal Tiwari and Vijay Shankar Tiwari and their cousin Ganesh Pandey had joined the SP after they were expelled by the BSP in December 2021 — just ahead of the assembly elections in the state.
It’s significant to note that Akhilesh’s decision comes hours after the Trinamool Congress confirmed that its chief Mamata Banerjee will skip the event. Instead, the party will be represented by TMC Member of Parliament Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar.
Also Read: Mamata to skip Siddaramaiah’s oath ceremony, deputes MP for Congress’s Oppn ‘show of strength’
SP-Congress dynamics
The last few months have seen the SP chief make multiple statements about considering “local party workers’ sentiments” about fielding from the two Lok Sabha constituencies that are traditionally considered Congress strongholds.
While Raebareli has been the bastion of several leaders from the Gandhi family – such as former prime minister Indira Gandhi, her husband Feroze and eventually Sonia — Amethi had been a Congress bastion from 1967 to 2019.
While Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lost Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019, his mother and former party president Sonia currently represents Raebareli.
The first hint that the SP chief was considering fielding candidates from Amethi and Raebareli came at its national executive meeting in March.
At the meeting, Akhilesh reportedly said: “I was recently in Amethi. Our party helps the Congress win elections in these two seats but when there is injustice against SP workers, the Congress doesn’t utter a word. Our leaders say we should contest the elections from these seats. We will speak to our party workers and decide”.
This was followed by media reports that the SP chief had deputed senior leaders to appoint booth committees in Amethi and Raebareli — where the party has traditionally refrained from fielding candidates against the Congress — in March.
A senior SP leader who didn’t want to be named told ThePrint that there was pressure on the party from local leaders “to field a candidate, especially in Amethi”.
But another leader told ThePrint that there was still some time before the 2024 General Election. The leader also did not rule out an alliance with the Congress.
“There is still a long road ahead before the polls. In politics, one has to keep one’s options open. However, with this move, Akhilesh ji wants to avoid any talks of a coalition forming with Congress in UP for now,” the leader said.
It’s significant to note that Akhilesh had also declined to be part of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodi Yatra’ last December. Party leaders had then too also put down that refusal to the SP’s attempt to avoid any talks of coalition with the Congress ahead of the 2024 election.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
This is an updated version of this report