Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday said that the alliance with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party was a trial and “sometimes trials don’t succeed”.

“I studied engineering in Mysore. As a science student, I know that all experiments do not always succeed. But still we give it a trial and learn what is lacking,” Akhilesh Yadav was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

BSP had decided to contest the bypolls to 11 seats in Uttar Pradesh alone hitting a pause button on the alliance with SP but party chief Mayawati though insisted but that it wasn’t a “permanent break”.

The Samajwadi Party chief said his respect for Mayawati remain intact. “In the very first press conference, I had said that my respect is Mayawati ji’s respect and even today I stand by that statement.”

On the possibility of SP joining hands with the BSP for the UP assembly polls, Akhilesh Yadav said for now the plan is to fight the byelections alone and the strategy for 2022 will be decided later. “We can have different paths and different working styles and I would extend my best wishes to everybody,” he added.

The SP and BSP had forged an alliance in January this year to take on the BJP in the parliamentary elections. The alliance failed in its objective with the BJP winning 62 of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. The SP-BSP alliance fared poorly winning just 15 seats.

First Published: Jun 05, 2019 13:37 IST