SP sets target of winning 50 seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2024 Lok Sabha polls

NEW DELHI: The Samajwadi Party on Saturday set a target of winning at least 50 of the total 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 elections and ensure that the BJP is defeated in the northern state.

समाजवादी पार्टी "राष्ट्रीय कार्यकारिणी" की दो दिवसीय बैठक कोलकाता में प्रारंभ हुई। pic.twitter.com/qJfnpWJy6U

— Samajwadi Party (@samajwadiparty) March 18, 2023

The SP began its two-day national executive meeting in Kolkata on Saturday, during which it started discussing the party’s policies and strategies for the assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states – Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – due later this year, and the Lok Sabha polls next year.

”Today, on our first meeting day, we discussed organisational issues. In 2024, we plan to win at least 50 seats from Uttar Pradesh,” senior SP leader Shivpal Singh Yadav told reporters.

Later while talking to PTI, SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav said the party would do everything to stop the BJP’s juggernaut in Uttar Pradesh.

”Uttar Pradesh is the only state which can stop the BJP as it has the largest number of seats. The entire country is looking up to the Samajwadi Party. We will defeat the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP has told a lot of lies, be it prices of diesel, petrol or LPG or price rise,” he said, adding that it seems that the saffron party is working for big corporate houses.

The party’s national executive is being held in Kolkata after a gap of 11 years. Samajwadi Party founder, the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, had flown down to the city to chair the previous meeting in the eastern metropolis.

Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Trinamool Congress and Samajwadi Party had on Friday agreed to put up a united fight against the BJP and sought to edge the Congress out of any such formation, stating that the grand old party needs to shed its ”big boss attitude”.

”It has been decided that the TMC and the SP would unite to fight the BJP. Both parties would also maintain distance from the Congress,” senior SP leader Kiranmoy Nanda had told PTI after a meeting with TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee.

Yadav on Friday said that his party would maintain equidistance from both the BJP and the Congress.

The SP and Congress had joined hands in the 2017 assembly poll in UP but lost to the BJP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the grand old party was kept out of the SP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh.

Source: Press Trust of India