BSP forms alliance with Gondwana Gantantra Party for Madhya Pradesh elections

Bhopal: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) on Saturday announced an alliance for the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.

The BSP will contest 178 seats while the GGP will field candidates on 52 seats, said the BSP's Rajya Sabha member Ramji Gautam and GGP's general secretary Balbir Singh Tomar at a press conference here.

"A government of this alliance will be formed to end the atrocities on Dalits, tribals and women. It will also end the dictatorial and capitalist rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress, and the poor will get justice," the two parties said in a statement issued later.

Elections to the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly are due in November.

In the 2018 assembly polls, the BSP had won two seats, and one of the two MLAs later joined the BJP.

The GGP was formed about three decades ago as a tribal outfit in undivided Madhya Pradesh. It won a single seat in the assembly in 1998. In 2003, it won three assembly seats, its best performance to date.

Senior journalist and political commentator Rasheed Kidwai said the GGP, formed in 1991, is staring at an uncertain future.

It had shown tremendous potential in 2003 assembly polls, but in 2008 and 2013 it was plagued by desertions and compromises by individual leaders, he said.

It had formed a tie-up with the Samajwadi Party in 2018 elections. It is no longer perceived as a party of tribals in a state which has a sizable tribal population, Kidwai said.