BSP forms alliance with Gondwana Gantantra Party for Madhya Pradesh assembly polls

BHOPAL: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) have announced an alliance for the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections due this year-end.

The BSP will contest 178 seats (out of the total 230 in the state) while the GGP will field candidates in 52 seats, BSP Rajya Sabha member Ramji Gautam and GGP's general secretary Balbir Singh Tomar said at a press conference here on Saturday.

"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 the Congress, and the poor will get justice," the two parties said in a statement issued later.

In the 2018 state assembly polls, the BSP 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 the then-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 claimed the GGP, formed in 1991, is staring at an uncertain future.

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

The GGP entered into a tie-up with the Samajwadi Party in the 2018 elections. It is no longer perceived as a party of tribals in the state which has a sizable tribal population, Kidwai claimed.