In a First, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati to Share Stage at Kumaraswamy’s Swearing-in Ceremony

Lucknow: What the by-elections or the Rajya Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh couldn’t, the result of the Karnataka polls may do – bring Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav to the same stage at the same time.

The heads of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party respectively have been invited by JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy for his swearing in ceremony as Karnataka chief minister on Wednesday, and the offices of the two have said that they would attend.

The two parties had forged an understanding during the bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur in March and fought the Rajya Sabha polls together. They have also confirmed that the alliance would continue till 2019 polls, but the two leaders haven’t shared the stage even once since then.

An invite was also sent to Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, whose party had fought the Karnataka election but lost its deposits on all 29 seats.

Kumaraswamy, who is in Delhi to meet Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi in Delhi on Monday to finalise the distribution of portfolios, will first call on Mayawati. The JD(S) and the BSP had fought the Karnataka Elections as a pre-poll alliance and the latter had bagged one seat.

The lone BSP MLA in Karnataka, N Mahesh, is all set to get a berth in the Kumaraswamy Cabinet. Mahesh who also heads the BSP state unit won the Kollegal seat by defeating his rival AR Krishna from Congress by a margin of 19,454 votes.

When the other JDS and Congress MLAs were holed up at a resort in Bengaluru, Mahesh was staying with senior BSP leader Ashok Siddharth at a guest house in Bengaluru and had allegedly rejected the offer to support the BJP.

Apart from Mayawati, Akhilesh and Kejriwal, others who are invited for the swearing in ceremony include Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Chandrababu Naidu and Mamata Banerjee.

The rise of Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka may act as a platform to unite opposition parties, especially the regional parties to play a bigger role in the national arena during parliamentary elections in 2019.