Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav was conspicuous in his absence at the swearing-in ceremony of the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Bengaluru on Saturday, where leaders of several parties and CMs of several states converged, turning it into a big showcase for Opposition unity in the run-up to next year's Lok Sabha elections. It is being seen as a significant message to the Congress, with regional parties including the SP saying earlier that the Congress should accept their dominance in the states where they are strong. While the SP president, who was sent an invite, skipped the ceremony, ally Rashtriya Lok Dal's president and Rajya Sabha MP Jayant Chaudhary was present. The party officially claimed that Akhilesh had to drop out because of prior engagements in Gorakhpur and Ballia. Akhilesh was scheduled to visit Gorakhpur Saturday to express condolences to the family of Harishankar Tiwari, former minister and strongman of eastern UP, who passed away earlier this week. Akhilesh also had to meet the party’s ailing former MLA, Sharda Devi. In Ballia, he had to visit the residence of party leader Arvind Giri to express condolence over the death of his father. However, Akhilesh eventually postponed all programmes and rushed to parental village Saifai to attend last rites of his aunt, who passed away on Saturday. “Akhileshji was invited for the swearing-in ceremony of the Congress government in Karnataka. He even received a phone call from Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. But he could not attend because of his pre-scheduled tour of Gorakhpur and Ballia. There is no political reason behind his absence,” said Rajendra Chaudhary, SP spokesperson. Chaudhary said that Akhilesh had written a letter to Siddaramaiah to wish him. However, another senior SP leader said Akhilesh had deliberately skipped the ceremony because there was no clarity so far over any possible alliance between the SP and the Congress in UP for the Lok Sabha elections. “How can we forget that the Congress contested against the SP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2022 Assembly polls? There has been no dialogue between top leaders of the two parties for a long time. As of now, the SP is anti-Congress as well as anti-BJP. In this situation, sharing stage with the Congress’s top leaders is not okay,” said the SP leader. Sources said that Akhilesh is cautious about making an alliance for 2024 after his experience of the 2019 polls, in which SP’s tally remained 5 — the same as 2014 - while its ally BSP got 10 seats. In 2014, the BSP’s score was nil. Last month when Bihar CM and Nitish Kumar had met Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata and later Akhilesh in Lucknow, the JD(U) supremo had said efforts will continue to bring together as many Opposition parties as possible in order to “oust the BJP from power” in 2024. Akhilesh had also criticised the BJP, saying the Opposition would together oust it from power to “save democracy, Constitution and the country”. Nitish was present at the oath-taking ceremony in Karnataka. However, Mamata skipped it and sent a junior TMC leader. Earlier in March, Akhilesh said that the Congress should support regional parties in the fight against the BJP. In a statement, he said that various regional parties in their respective states were fighting the BJP. "All the parties fighting against the BJP across the country should come together. The Congress should decide its role at the national level. It should support the other parties in their areas of strength. Time has come for the Congress to bring regional parties into the front and support these parties to defeat the BJP," the SP president said. Further, Akhilesh has dropped hints that the SP will field a candidate in Amethi where the SP has been giving walkover to the Congress in the past four Lok Sabha elections.
