Lucknow: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said on Tuesday that the main responsibility of reducing the BJP to zero in the 2019 elections was on BSP national president Mayawati.

Addressing party workers here, he said that his party would reduce the BJP to 5 seats, Congress would bring them down to 2 seats and the Rashtriya Lok Dal would bring the BJP down to one seat.

“But it is the responsibility of BSP to completely wipe out the BJP by reducing their tally to zero seats”, he said.

Mr Yadav has made it clear that the onus of forging the alliance and making it viable for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections was on the BSP and not the SP.

The BSP had earlier sent out feelers that it would settle for a minimum of 40 seats from the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. At an event two days ago, the former chief minister had also claimed that the Uttar Pradesh alliance partners’ were ready with their 2019 strategy which cannot be shared now for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, the infighting in the Samajwadi Party worsened on Tuesday when estranged party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav, who has formed a Samajwadi Secular Morcha, un-followed the Samajwadi Party from his Twitter handle and removed the Samajwadi Party flag from his vehicle.