Under their agreement for UP, the Congress will contest 17 seats out of 80 in the state, leaving the remaining 63 seats for the SP and its smaller allies.
In MP, the Congress has agreed to allot the Khajuraho seat to the SP and will field its candidates from the remaining 28 constituencies in the state.
Congress sources said that All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra played a “crucial role” in resolving the standoff between the two INDIA parties by speaking with SP national president Akhilesh Yadav over the phone to clinch the deal.
The SP-Congress seat-sharing pact would come as a shot in the arm to the beleaguered INDIA bloc which has been lurching from crisis to crisis.
“Following our discussion, it has been decided that the Congress would contest 17 seats in UP. On the remaining 63 seats, Samajwadi Party and other parties of INDIA bloc would declare their candidates to fight and defeat BJP,” AICC general secretary Avinash Pande told a joint press conference along with UP Congress chief Ajay Rai, state SP chief Naresh Uttam and SP national spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary.
While thanking AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge and Akhilesh, Pandey highlighted Priyanka’s role in forging their alliance, saying it proved to be “decisive”. “We would specially like to thank Priyanka Gandhi ji for playing a crucial role in finalising the alliance and for her efforts to bring all such forces together which can defeat BJP,” he said.
The 17 seats allotted to the Congress include Raebareli, Amethi, Kanpur, Fatehpur Sikri, Bansgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Maharajganj, Varanasi, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria.
While Varanasi is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency, Raebareli and Amethi are among the few remaining strongholds of the Congress in UP. In the 2019 polls, Rahul Gandhi lost from Amethi to the BJP’s Smriti Irani, while Sonia Gandhi retained her Raebareli seat.
Sonia has now bid farewell to electoral politics and her Raebareli seat, deciding to file nomination for the February 27 Rajya Sabha polls from Rajasthan. She is likely to be replaced by Priyanka, her daughter, as the Congress candidate from Raebareli.
The SP will retain the Lucknow and Faizabad seats along with most of the constituencies in the western UP region barring Saharanpur, Mathura, Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr.
Naresh Uttam said, “For social harmony in the country and to end social and economic inequality, Samajwadi Party and Congress have decided seat-sharing,” adding that Akhilesh would decide the candidates in 63 seats left for the SP under the deal.
Ajay Rai said, “The way our leader Priyanka Gandhi is working hard, it has given us strength and we will make all efforts to fight from the 17 seats.”
On Akhilesh’s statement that he would join Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which is currently traversing UP, only after the conclusion of his party’s seat-sharing with the Congress, Pande said the SP supremo had said earlier that he would join the Yatra in Amethi or Raebareli. He said since the Yatra has crossed these two belts and would now resume
from west UP on February 24, the Congress has informed the SP about Rahul’s route map ahead. Akhilesh would now decide about his plan to join the Yatra, he added.
Asked about any deadlock on seats like Shravasti that the Congress is seeking, Pande denied that there were any hurdles and that the discussion between the two allies was continuing.
