SP, Apna Dal will fight 2024 Lok Sabha polls together: Akhilesh Yadav

Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday said his party's alliance with the Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) will continue in next year's Lok Sabha elections and assured that it will be given full respect.

Addressing a Foundation Day function of the Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) at the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Lucknow as the chief guest, Yadav said both parties have the same goal.

"We have come together, if the alliance continues like this, it is bound to effect a change in the times to come. Whatever we have inherited, it is our responsibility to pass it onto the coming generation and make it better and stronger," he said.

"We will fight the 2024 Lok Sabha elections together and we will fully respect the trust with which you people have come with us," the SP chief said.

The Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) contested the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in alliance with the SP. However, all its candidates, including party president Krishna Patel, lost.

Krishna Patel's elder daughter Pallavi Patel won the Sirathu seat in Kaushambi district on the Samajwadi Party's symbol.

Thanking the leaders of the Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) for inviting him to the vent, the SP president said the socialists and the kamerwadis have been demanding a caste census for a long time.

"Social justice is incomplete without a caste census. By conducting a caste census, the number of all castes in society will be known so that they will get rights and respect in proportion to the population," he said.

Yadav said SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav and Apna Dal founder Sonelal Patel "worked to awaken the poor, Dalits, backward classes and minorities and fought for them. We have to move forward on the path of struggle shown by both the leaders."

Those who are in power today do not know the power of "PDA - pichhda, Dalit, alpsankhyak (backwards, Dalits and minorities)".

He alleged that despite losing in the 2022 elections, the BJP stayed in power through cheating.

In her welcome speech, Pallavi Patel said that Apna Dal needs to rapidly advance the fight for change in the system.

The Apna Dal was founded by Sonelal Patel, husband of Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) president Krishna Patel and father of Union minister Anupriya Patel on November 4, 1995.

It split after his death with one faction, Apna Dal (Sonelal), being led by Anupriya Patel and the other faction by her mother Krishna Patel.

On Saturday, the Foundation Day ceremony of the Apna Dal (Sonelal) was organised in Ayodhya.

Anupriya Patel's party is a constituent of the National Democratic Alliance.