UP politics has a new spin to it! The Samajwadi Party (SP) may impose new conditions on the Congress for a crucial opposition alliance in Uttar Pradesh. This is a build up for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 and senior leaders from both sides are in touch to iron out the differences.
Senior SP leaders have indicated that the party’s rank and file wants seats from the Congress in the assembly poll-bound states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, in exchange for a pact in UP, where the SP party already has an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Sources confirmed that SP wants to increase its hold in the other three Hindi speaking states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. All three states are due for the states next month.
Earlier the BSP, too, demanded a pan-India pact with the Congress as the two sides were negotiating alliances in the poll-bound states. Party chief Mayawati eventually picked Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress Chhattisgarh and has announced candidates for 22 seats in Madhya Pradesh.
Leaders from both the sides are pining their hopes to a conclusive discussion in the coming weeks.
In mid-September, senior leaders from the Congress and the SP met to discuss the modalities of a possible alliance. A Congress functionary was quoted to have said that the talks did not yield the desired result as SP was wary about the caste equation and the distribution of seats.
Another senior Congress leader added that party president Rahul Gandhi and senior party leaders such as Ghulam Nabi Azad and Salman Khurshid have been discussing the modalities of an SP-BSP-Congress pact in the country’s most populous state.
Talking to reporters in Madhya Pradesh’s Shahdol, former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, put the onus of stitching together a deal on the Congress. “It is the responsibility of the Congress to see how the people with similar ideology can come together.”
Senior Congress leader PL Punia said that the Congress wants to bring together all opposition parties to fight against the BJP. “But it doesn’t mean that if we are left alone, we are a spent force. Please remember, that in 2009 Congress didn’t have any alliance yet managed to win 23 seats while the SP won 21 and BSP got 20 seats,” he said. Punia, a Rajya Sabha MP from UP, is looking after Chhattisgarh affairs for the party.
Neelanjan Sircar of the Centre for Policy Research said a tie-up in other states may help the Samajwadi Party. “As the Samajwadi Party cares only about Uttar Pradesh, they don’t care much about Congress. Their strength in UP, however, has given them a big bargaining chip with Congress. A tie-up in other states may help the SP get a few more seats. On the other hand, they don’t have much to lose if Congress doesn’t have an alliance with them in UP,” he said.