SP, Congress clinch UP seat sharing deal

Lucknow: INDIA bloc partners SP and Congress on Wednesday announced a tie-up for the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, with the UP's main opposition party leaving 17 out of the 80 seats in the state for the ally. In Madhya Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party will contest on a single seat, Khajuraho, and support the Congress in the remaining 28 constituencies in the state.

Among the 17 seats on which the Congress will contest in UP included Raebareli and Amethi, once considered pocket boroughs of the party, and Varanasi which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency.

The seat-sharing announcement was made at a joint press conference here by SP state chief Naresh Uttam Patel, SP national general secretary Rajendra Chaudhary, Congress state president Ajay Rai and AICC in-charge of UP Avinash Pande. Pande said the Congress will contest on 17 seats, while on the rest 63 seats in the state, the SP and other alliance partners will contest.

SP state chief Patel said party president Akhilesh Yadav will decide candidates for the 63 parliamentary seats in UP.

Apart from Raebareli, Amethi and Varanasi, the other seats on which the Congress will be contesting included Kanpur City, Fatehpur Sekri, Basgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Maharajganj, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria, Patel said.

Sonia Gandhi is presently MP of Raebareli while Rahul Gandhi lost his Amethi seat to BJP leader Smriti Irani in 2019 polls. The SP will contest on Khajuraho seat in Madhya Pradesh, which has 29 Lok Sabha seats, and support the Congress on the rest of the seats, Patel said. He said senior leaders of both the parties will chalk out future programmes of the alliance.

Asked when Akhilesh Yadav will join Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Patel said, “I hope he might join the yatra on February 24 or 25 as per his convenience.” Yadav had recently said that he would join the Nyay Yatra after the seat-sharing is finalised.