Samata Kranti puts end to talk of tie-up with BJP

Sambad English Bureau Published On : Mar 6, 2014 at 2:47 PM Updated On : Mar 6, 2014 at 9:16 PM

Odisha Sun Times Bureau

Bhubaneswar, Mar 6:

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Samata Kranti Dal (SKD) president Braja Kishore Tripathy today announced that his party will have no alliance with any party for the coming elections, putting an end to speculation about a possible alliance with the BJP in the state.

Tripathy, however, said his party would not contest 13-14 out of the 21 Lok Sabha seats and about 50 Assembly seats in Odisha. The party would support an appropriate non-BJD candidate in the rest who would be decided later.

“We had a preliminary round of discussion with the central leaders of the BJP, which was supposed to be followed up by the state leadership of the party. But since they have not taken any initiative in this regard so far, the party decided today to go it alone in the elections,” the former Union minister said.

The SKD chief lashed out at the media for what he called its wild speculation about the number of seats it had asked for to join the alliance. “When the talks for a possible seat sharing arrangement have not even begun, how can we possibly ask for a particular number of seats?” he asked.