Akhilesh vs Mulayam: Why the SP infighting is bad news for BJP
Walking out of the shadow of his father and uncle and with the support of Congress and Nitish Kumar, Akhilesh Yadav could be bad news for the BJP The split in the Samajwadi Party (SP), which increasingly looks imminent, is bad news for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), not just for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls but also for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. With the Congress weakened, the BJP effort has been to dent the support base as well as credibility of regional political parties that have the potential to form the nucleus of a strong third front in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. These parties are Uttar Pradesh-based SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP); Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha; the Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu; the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad Akhilesh Yadav combine in Bihar, Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in Bengal and the Left parties. The states where these parties wield influence – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Benga...