After Uttar Pradesh, the Mayawati-led BSP and Akhilesh Yadav's SP on Monday announced a pre-poll alliance for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand before the General Elections 2019. While SP will contest 3 Lok Sabha seats in MP, the BSP will fight elections in rest of the 26 seats. The three seats from where Samajwadi Party will field its candidates include Balaghat, Thikri and Khajuraho. In Uttarakhand, SP will contest on one seat, while the BSP has decided to contest on three seats. Revealing information on their seat-sharing pact in these two states, the SP and BSP, in a joint statement, said the decision to jointly contest the parliamentary elections was taken by the party chiefs.

Both the SP and the BSP have already stitched ties in Uttar Pradesh while keeping the Congress out of the alliance. While SP will fight elections on 37 seats in UP, the BSP will contest on 38 Parliamentary constituencies. Their alliance partner RLD (Rashtriya Lok Dal) will contest on three seats. Both the parties have decided not to field any candidate against Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Amethi and former party chief Sonia Gandhi in Raebareli. UP has a total of 80 Lok Sabha constituencies.

Both the parties will contest elections together after a gap of 26 years against the BJP, which swept the state in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

With the 2019 General Elections just a few months away, opposition parties are forgetting political rivalries to form formidable alliances in order to beat the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP. Earlier, putting his weight behind the SP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that only SP-BSP alliance in UP, Mamata Banerjee-led TMC in West Bengal, the DMK in Tamil Nadu could defeat the BJP in their respective states in the Lok Sabha election.

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