Arun Jaitley: on BJP alliances in UP

10 Apr 2009

"In the last two years, our party has grown in Uttar Pradesh as a major anti-Samajwadi Party and anti-BSP force. Hence, a tie-up with these parties is unlikely.”

Politics makes for strange bedfellows and in what is proving to be hugely fractious run up to the general elections, anything goes. So, whatever any political party or politician says these days must be taken with a pinch of salt. Arun Jaitley may currently believe that the BJP's existence in UP (whatever little that remains of it) is owed to its anti-SP/BSP stand, but the fact is that the very same BJP has had coalitions with BSP in the past, even though they proved to be acrimonious and short-lived. What compulsions would result in what marriages post election results is anybody's guess.