Chandrashekhar Azad, the commander of the Bhim Army, announced on Saturday that his political party, the Azad Samaj Party, would not form an alliance with the Samajwadi Party in the next Uttar Pradesh Assembly election.
Mr Azad told reporters that Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav "does not seek Dalit support."
Akhileshji insulted us the other day... Akhileshji insulted the "bahujan samaj" yesterday, Chandrashekhar Azad said, a day after meeting with the Samajwadi Party president to discuss seat-sharing.
According to Sources , Akhilesh Yadav allocated three seats to the Azad Samaj Party, but Chandrashekhar Azad demanded ten seats and a centre floor could not be established.
Akhilesh Yadav has emerged as perhaps the most important challenger to the incumbent BJP ahead of the UP election (which begins on February 10).
Mr Yadav has turned down help from larger parties like the Congress in favour of forming a "rainbow" alliance of regional parties like Omprakash Rajbhar's Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (which merged with the Samajwadi Party last year) and Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal.
He's also poached BJP politicians with significant clout among the OBC electorate, including (so far) two ministers, Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, who joined his cause yesterday.
Given that Mr Yadav's most committed followers are Yadavs and Muslims, the BJP's strategy in 2017 was to win over non-Yadav OBC castes. This time around, the Samajwadi Party chief's strategy is to repeat the feat by enlisting the support of non-Yadav OBC politicians.
In November, Akhilesh Yadav told Sources that a "pincer" movement of enraged farmers in the west (over the now-scrapped farm laws) and a "rainbow alliance" of regional events in the east would "wipe out the BJP" in the election.
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