The two parties on Monday began parleys on sharing of the Lok Sabha (LS) seats in UP. After a three-hour long meet in New Delhi, both expressed hope that they would be ready to seal the deal by the end of this month itself.

The negotiations were limited only to the 80 LS seats in UP. But   SP keen to expand beyond UP – insisted that the electoral tie-up between the two parties should be broad-based and spread to Karnataka, Maharashtra and a few other northern states too.

 The Congress remained non-committal on the SP’s proposal to take the alliance beyond UP.
The Congress’s team of negotiators comprised of the party’s young MP Rahul Gandhi, the AICC General Secretary  Digvijay Singh and the President of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC)  Rita Bahuguna Joshi.

The SP was represented by its general secretaries Amar Singh and Ram Gopal Yadav.
“We have reached agreement on majority of the seats. That we have to contest the LS elections in UP together is the over-riding sentiment in both the parties,” said Digvijay Singh, who is in-charge of the party’s affairs in the northern state. He said both the parties agreed that ‘winning ability’ would be the main criterion both for deciding which party would contest for a particular seat and for selecting candidate for the constituency.

“We would also take into account the candidates chosen by our rivals like the BJP and the BSP,” the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister added. He got a nod from Amar Singh.

Negotiation on remaining seats may be tough.

Though Congress and the SP claimed that talks were held in a very cordial atmosphere on Monday, sources said that both the parties were ready for tough negotiations for most of the remaining seats.

The Congress is believed to have sought to contest for at least 30 seats. But talking to the mediapersons after the meeting, Amar Singh referred to the Congress’s weakness in UP and abysmal performance in the last elections – indicating that his party is unlikely to spare so many seats for its new ally in the state.

The Congress had contested for 73, but won just nine seats in  UP and secured 12.04 per cent of the total votes cast in the 2004 LS polls. The SP had won 35 of the 68 seats it had contested and secured 26.74 per cent votes.
The BJP and the BSP had bagged 10 and 19 seats, with the vote share of the two parties being 22.17 per cent and 24.67 per cent respectively.

Digvijay Singh said profiles of many constituencies changed drastically after the delimitation exercise and hence past-performance of a party or a candidate might not be the only factor to be considered to decide which party would contest for a particular seat.

“The Congress is seeking more seats in UP despite its weakness in the state. Similarly, we are also asking the Congress to help us in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, where we have marginal presence,” said Amar Singh.

UTTAR PRADESH: Formula may face problems

Lucknow, DHNS: The warmth displayed by the Congress and the Samajwadi Party leaders, two possible alliance partners in the next Lok Sabha polls in UP, might prove thorny in the backdrop of the Congress showing interest on contesting from 30 seats.

According to a senior state Congress leader, the party should not surrender before the SP, and stake its claim for a minimum of 30 seats where it has a fair chance of winning.

Congress had won nine seats in the last Lok Sabha polls and had finished runners up on six others. Of these six seats, three were won by the SP.

He said that on seats like Farrukhabad, Pratapgarh and Rampur, the party lost owing to large scale misuse of government machinery. All these three seats were won by the SP.

Besides, suspended SP leaders Raj Babbar, an MP from Agra and Beni Prasad Verma, an MP from Kaiserganj were now with the Congress. So, the party could claim those two seats also.

State Congress leaders said that any surrender to the SP could prove to be very costly to the party. He recalled the Congress-BSP alliance in the State earlier when the former had contested only 125 assembly seats leaving 300 for the latter. The party not only received a severe drubbing but is also on the decline ever since.
The senior UPCC leaders however feel that a respectable seat sharing formula would be worked out but they did not also rule out friendly fights on some seats.

Another problem that might come in the way is the Rashtriya Lok Dal’s (RLD) inclination towards joining the congress-SP alliance. In that case the RLD could also stake claim on five to seven seats, the sources said.