'UP, Bihar will decide who will be in power at Centre'

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav on Monday hailed the SP-BSP alliance and said that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar would "decide", who will rule the Centre after the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Tejashwi, who met SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP supremo Mayawati here after his arrival here on Sunday night, also seemed to endorse Mayawati's view that the Congress was not needed to "defeat" the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

"The SP and BSP have shown that they are capable of defeating the BJP in UP...the results of the three LS bypolls in Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana are pointers to this," the RJD leader told reporters here.

He said that the future politics of the country would be decided by Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and claimed that the SP-BSP alliance in the state and the RJD-led alliance in Bihar would "sweep" the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

He sought to play down Congress' decision to contest all the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 general elections saying that Congress president Rahul Gandhi had also welcomed the alliance. "Our main objective is to defeat the BJP in the country...it does not matter, who does that and where," he added.

The RJD leader slammed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and said that the state had slipped into "lawlessness" under the JD(U) chief. "There is no law and order in Bihar...Nitish lacks the guts to face the Assembly," he said.