After Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypoll victory, SP-BSP bonhomie makes to hoardings in Lucknow

LUCKNOW: After clinching a crucial victory in Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypoll by striking a barter deal which may catapult into a grand alliance in future, the new-found SP-BSP bonhomie has now made
it to huge hoardings in Lucknow on Friday morning.

After a gap over two decades, these hoardings, installed right outside the SP headquarters, have with photographs of BSP chief Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav besides the pictures of SP patriarch Mulayam
Singh Yadav and BSP founder president late Kashiram.

On the face of it, the hoardings bear greetings and congratulatory messages for UP bypoll winners but coming a day after SP chief Akhilesh Yadav issued a statement extending his wishes on the birth
anniversary of Kashiram, political observers believe there was much more to the hoardings.

“Having come up right in front of the SP office indicates that the horading have been installed with the approval of SP leadership,” says a political observer. However, the care has been taken to ensure that BSP chief is given a respectable space on it with a photograph larger than that of Akhilesh.

The fact the hoarding also has pictures of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kashiram along with that of SP’s Muslim face Azam Khan, is being seen as a message from the two sides that they were willing to bury
all previous hatchets and move ahead with the common goal of defeating  BJP in the state as was said by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav that it was better to forget the past for a better future.

The man behind the hoardings, Tariq Ahmad Lari – who happens to be a former vice president of Mulayam Singh Youth Brigade – says the publicity material only reflects the feelings of the party workers
in SP and BSP as they had realised that coming together of the two parties was crucial in the present
political scenario to check the saffron surge.