Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said on Thursday that his Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj party (BSP) coming closer was all about getting the maths right.

Speaking a day before the two leaders are expected to announce the alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the SP chief said, “We decided to correct our counting, our arithmetic. We corrected our arithmetic and the results came in three Lok Sabha and one assembly bypolls.”

He was speaking in Lukcknow at #ChaupalOnTwitter, an inititive to encourage conversation between leaders and the community. Twitter India and several leaders have partnered to launch the initiative.

Refusing to divulge details about the agenda for the alliance, Yadav said, “It won’t be appropriate to give any details before the press conference tomorrow.”

The two parties first publically spoke about the alliance in March last year and then experimented with it in three Lok Sabha bypolls and one state assembly bypoll. The BJP lost all those seats to the alliance.

The SP-BSP alliance can be a formidable opposition to the BJP which won 71 Lok Sabha seats in UP in 2014.

The two leaders, in a recent meeting in Delhi, discussed the modalities of seat sharing for the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, according to sources.

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First Published: Jan 11, 2019 13:27 IST