Akhilesh-Mayawati combine can alter BJP's poll math for 2019: ABP News survey

If Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav form a pre-poll alliance, the NDA will suffer a huge loss to its seat tally. The SP-BSP combine in Uttar Pradesh will be victorious on whopping 50 seats and the NDA will slid to 28, bearing a loss of 43 seats compared to 2014, if Lok Sabha elections were held today. The Congress-led UPA will see only two of its candidates winning.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP supremo Mayawati. PTI Photo

NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh which sends the maximum members (80) to the Parliament holds the key for both the NDA and the UPA for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. One of the reasons the BJP-led NDA secured a landslide victory in the general elections of 2014 was that it had swept Uttar Pradesh by winning 71 out of 80 seats. In its road to replicate the previous poll performance, the BJP faces at least two roadblocks -the SP and the BSP. It's not that these two parties were not there in 2014 but because they have found a winning mantra against the saffron party and that's by getting united. This formula worked for them in Lok Sabha by-polls to Gorakhpur, the bastion of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, and Phulpur, stronghold of deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, where the Bua-Bhatija combine humiliated the ruling BJP. Later in the Kairana by-elections, the SP-BSP alliance again crushed the saffron party. Now, according to a survey conducted by ABP News and C-Voter, if Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav form a pre-poll alliance, the NDA will suffer a huge loss to its seat tally. The SP-BSP combine in Uttar Pradesh will be victorious on whopping 50 seats and the NDA will slid to 28, bearing a loss of 43 seats compared to 2014, if Lok Sabha elections were held today. The Congress-led UPA will see only two of its candidates winning. However, if Mayawati and Akhilesh contest the battle 2019 alone, then the NDA is slated to snatch the lion’s share of 72 seats in Uttar Pradesh while the Congress and the BSP may get just two seats each and the SP four. The Maya-Akhilesh combine can also alter the NDA's poll math for 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In case there is no SP-BSP Grand Alliance or 'Mahagathbandhan' in Uttar Pradesh, the NDA, according to the survey, will return to power in the Centre with 291 seats, 19 more than the halfway mark. But if Mayawati and Akhilesh come together, their alliance will reduce the NDA tally to 247 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha, 25 short of a clear majority. Akhilesh Yadav had already said his party will join an anti-BJP alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls even if it would require taking a few steps backwards. Mayawati, however, has maintained her party will go for an alliance only if gets a respectable share of seats, a glance of which we have seen when she dumped the Congress and contested alone in assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Also, in Chhattisgarh, she joined hands with Congress rebel Ajit Jogi's outfit. It may be recalled that the SP and the Congress had joined hands in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections of 2017, but the alliance failed miserably to take on the BJP. The SP-Congress coalition faced a rout and could only win 54 seats and the BJP came to power by winning 325 seats.