Want BJP to lose: Mamata pledges support to Akhilesh for UP polls

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee, before leaving for Lucknow to campaign for the Samajwadi Party (SP), said she wanted the latter to defeat the BJP in the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh (UP) Assembly polls.

Banerjee said: "I shall be happy if Akhilesh wins the Assembly election in UP."

Mamata added that the Congress should support the SP in the UP polls, since "milega kuchh nahin (they won't win)".

She said her party had tried to persuade the Congress but it didn't listen.

"Milega kuchh nahin toh kisi ka vote kaatne ki jaroorat nahin hain (they won't win, so why eat into someone else's votes?)" she told reporters at the Kolkata airport, from where she flew to Lucknow. The TMC supremo will be holding a joint press conference with Akhilesh Yadav, the national president of SP, and a virtual rally in Lucknow on February 8.

"Akhilesh Yadav has invited me to go there and campaign for SP. We (TMC) want BJP to be defeated and Akhilesh to win in Uttar Pradesh. All of us should support him in his fight against BJP. That is why we have decided not to contest the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh this time," Banerjee stated.

She added that Samajwadi Party president Kironmoy Nanda had gone to her house in Kolkata and invited her to visit UP.

Banerjee said Trinamool Congress is not contesting in the forthcoming Assembly elections in UP. Later, she might go to Varanasi. "I will visit Kashi Vishwanath temple and watch the Ganga aarti," she told reporters here.

Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC national general-secretary, in an interview to a vernacular channel on Sunday, had said the party might contest in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in UP.

Mamata Banerjee's credibility has gone up across the country after she defeated the BJP in the 2021 Assembly elections in Bengal. Trinamool is contesting in the Assembly election in Goa and has inked an electoral alliance with Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party. TMC will also contest the Assembly election in Tripura in 2023.

Akhilesh shares a very cordial relationship with Mamata and had even attended the grand opposition meeting hosted by the TMC supremo in January 2019.