No Truck With Congress, Says Kanshi

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has ruled out continuance of its alliance with the Congress for contesting the coming bye elections in Uttar Pradesh.

We will have no truck with Congress in the coming UP byelections, BSP supremo Kanshi Ram told reporters here on Sunday.

Earlier, the UP state Congress chief, Jitendra Prasad, had said both the parties would continue their tie-up, which had earlier proved considerably successful in the assembly poll last year.

Kanshi Ram, however, said the allaiance was only for Assembly elections and it was not renewed.

His statement came close on the heels of Congress failure to tie-up with the BSP for Punjab polls.

The BSP has since formed an alliance with the Akali Dal led by Simranjit Singh Mann.

He claimed that his party, which is fielding about 65 candidates, would garner a minimum of 32 per cent votes. Punjab with 117 assembly constituencies has about 1.51 crore voters.