- Samajwadi Party MLA suggests Akhilesh Yadav should lead the INDIA opposition bloc
- The Samajwadi Party claims it can form the Uttar Pradesh government independently
- Congress suffered major losses in Bihar Assembly elections, winning only six seats
The Congress's decimation in the Bihar Assembly election has triggered murmurs about a leadership change in the INDIA opposition bloc. A Samajwadi Party MLA has said that the party's chief and Kannauj MP Akhilesh Yadav should lead the Opposition alliance and added that the Samajwadi Party is capable of forming a government on its own in Uttar Pradesh, among the most politically significant states of the country.
The Samajwadi Party, which won 37 Lok Sabha seats in the general election last year, is the second-largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha after the Congress.
Ravidas Mehrotra, MLA from Lucknow Central, has said the INDIA alliance would have formed the government in Bihar if the ballot method had been used for conducting the election. Akhilesh Yadav has repeatedly pushed for a return to ballot voting and questioned the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) system.
"Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav should lead the India Alliance. Samajwadi Party is capable of forming a government on its own in Uttar Pradesh," he said.
The remarks are significant against the backdrop of the Congress's rout in the Bihar election. The country's main opposition, which won 19 seats in the 2020 polls, managed to win just six this time. This, despite Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and the party's other top leaders holding several rallies ahead of the polls. The Congress's ally, RJD, won 25 seats -- 50 less than its 2020 score. The NDA posted a massive win in Bihar, winning 202 seats in the 243-member Assembly.
The Congress's poor performance in election after election has prompted voices in the INDIA alliance to push for a leadership change in the bloc. The main opposition, which won 99 seats in the Lok Sabha polls last year, has performed poorly in the state polls held since. BJP and its allies won six of the eight Assembly polls held last year, including the crucial elections in Haryana and Maharashtra.
Earlier, Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee had suggested that party chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should lead the INDIA bloc. "In the INDIA alliance, who is the leader? Nobody has been chosen as a leader, as a face of the opposition. Now it has to be done. The Congress has failed; that is established. Congress leaders tried in Haryana, but they failed. In Maharashtra, they failed. We reposed our faith in Congress, but it could not achieve the result," Banerjee told NDTV last year.
Interestingly, RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav, too, has batted for the Trinamool chief as the INDIA bloc head. Asked about the reservation among the Congress leaders to accept Banerjee as the INDIA leader, the RJD founder had said last year, "The Congress's opposition will not make any difference...She should be allowed to lead the INDIA bloc."
