SP-BSP alliance will have to begin with a clean slate to make any headway in 2019

Other parties' effort to ouster the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha election seems to be bearing fruit in Uttar Pradesh where the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal have come to a broad seat-sharing agreement, according to a NDTV report.

Uttar Pradesh, which has 80 Lok Sabha constituencies, accounts for the maximum number of parliamentarians in the lower house. The opposition parties are forging a common front in order to take on the BJP in the state, where this strategy helped them win bypolls held earlier this year.

In the Lok Sabha bypolls that were conducted in March 2018, BJP lost the prestigious Gorakhpur seat to the Samajwadi Party, which had outside support from BSP and RLD. The SP also won the bypoll for the Phulpur constituency.

The parties have now decided to use this strategy in the general elections as well in order to maximise their impact. In the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, the BJP had swept 71 of the 80 seats in UP, leaving only crumbs for other parties.

Before the 2017 assembly election in UP, the Congress and the SP had announced an alliance that failed to make any inroads. This was because the former's tally was reduced to 7 seats and the SP, which had swept the 2012 assembly election with 224 seats, managed to win only 47.

The "unholy alliance", as the BJP had termed it, was not the first of its kind. The SP and the BSP formed an alliance ahead of the 1993 assembly election, just after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Backed by the slogan "Mile Mulayam-Kanshi Ram, hawa ho gaye Jai Shri Ram", the alliance had set out to counter the sudden saffron surge that UP was experiencing.

The BSP, then headed by Kanshi Ram, had managed to win 67 seats and the SP won 109 seats with Mulayam Singh as its chief. Together, they managed to overtake BJP's tally of 177 and formed the first and the only SP-BSP government in the state.

However, it is noteworthy that the alliance did not last. Mayawati withdrew support to the government in 1995 and joined hands with the BJP to form the government. Since then, she has rejected many overtures by the SP to form an alliance.

But this year, Mayawati agreed to swallow the bitter pill ahead of Lok Sabha elections, despite all the mudslinging that both parties had indulged in before. Also on her mind would have been the infamous 'Guest House' incident in 1995, when she had to remain locked in a Lucknow VIP guest house while goons, reportedly with affiliations to the SP, paraded outside.

The goons had surrounded the guest house and were aggressively chanting anti-Mayawati slogans. The incident took a violent turn in the blink of an eye and to this day, it is referred to as the "Hidden Black Day" of Indian politics.

At the time, Mayawati had said that she has neither forgiven, nor forgotten the episode. But now, it seems she has decided to move on, probably because the party is now headed by Mulayam's son Akhilesh Yadav. And she is not the only one who has decided to set aside their differences for now.

After the infamous episode in 1995, SP supremo Mulayam Singh, addressing her as "par-kati aurat", had remarked, "Is she so beautiful that anyone should want to rape her?" He had also proposed an alliance with the BSP in 2014, which Mayawati had rejected.