Tejashwi Yadav meets Mayawati, predicts BJP's 'whitewash' in UP, Bihar

Lucknow, Jan 14: A day after SP and BSP announced their alliance in Uttar Pradesh for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav on Sunday met Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati and predicted that the BJP would be "whitewashed" in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

"There's atmosphere today where they want to scrap Baba Saheb's (BR Ambedkar) constitution and implement 'Nagpur laws'. People have welcomed the step taken by Mayawati-ji and Akhilesh-ji. The BJP will be whitewashed in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They won't win even one seat in Uttar Pradesh. The SP-BSP alliance will win all seats," Tejashwi Yadav told news agency ANI.

He also welcomed the "grand alliance" in Uttar Pradesh between Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP) -- in which both the parties agreed to contest in 38 seats each. He said his father, RJD chief Lalu Yadav, had always talked about a Bihar style alliance of regional parties to defeat the BJP.

The SP-BSP alliance was announced on January 12. The two parties have decided 50-50 seat-sharing deal in Uttar Pradesh. Out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, SP and BSP will contest on 38 seats each and have left two seats for the smaller parties. The parties, however, will not contest in Amethi and Raebareli represented by Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi respectively. The gathbandhan also kept Congress out of the alliance.

Ignored by SP and BSP, the Congress on Sunday announced that it will contest on all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP on its own in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.