Alliance with Congress 'off to a good start' on 11 Lok Sabha seats in UP: Akhilesh Yadav

The state sends 80 members to the Lower House of Parliament and elections are due in April-May.

New Delhi: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday announced a seat sharing arrangement with the Congress allocating 11 constituencies but the latter tasked its senior leader Ashok Gehlot to hold more talks while refusing to attest the number of seats allotted to it.

For the Congress, former Rajasthan Chief Minister Gehlot is holding direct talks with Akhilesh after the SP negotiators told Congress National Alliance Committee that if they needed more seats than the initial offer, they should talk to the party chief.

In a cryptic but what Congress described as a "positive in tone" post on 'X', Akhilesh said, "our friendly alliance with the Congress is off to a good start with 11 strong seats. This trend will move forward with the winning equation. 'I.N.D.I.A' team and 'PDA' strategy will change history." Akhilesh has been advocating 'pichde (backwards), Dalit and adivasi' of PDA combination to take on the BJP.

However, Congress did not officially speak about the conclusion of negotiations with General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh saying that Gehlot is holding talks with Yadav over seat-sharing and it is taking place in a positive and constructive environment.

"Ashok Gehlot is in direct contact with Akhilesh Yadav. The talks are taking place in a positive and constructive way. They (Gehlot and Akhilesh) are going to meet soon. When the discussions are over, we will announce what's the formula," Ramesh told a press conference soon after Akhilesh's social media post. SP and Jayant Singh-led RLD had entered into a pact earlier with the latter getting seven seats.

Ramesh's remarks were seen as Congress' reluctance to accept the number of seats announced by Akhilesh. However, Congress sources said they were not seeing the post in a negative tone as Akhilesh has used "positive language".

UP Congress president Ajay Rai also said that no deal had been reached with the SP and that the Congress would announce the number of seats it would contest in the state and not the SP.

According to Congress sources, Akhilesh's announcement could be a “pressure tactic'” to force the Congress to accept the offer. They said the seats being offered to the Congress included many "tough" seats where the party stood very little chance of winning even with the SP support.

Among the seats offered to the Congress were Amethi, Raebareli, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bansgaon, Jhansi, Kushinagar, Lucknow, Maharajganj, Prayagraj and Ghaziabad, they said.

Sources also highlighted the choice of party veteran Gehlot to hold negotiations with Akhilesh and said that the party seriously viewed the negotiations in Uttar Pradesh, especially after the SP leaders were unhappy with the way Congress UP chief Ajay Rai and General Secretary in-charge Avinash Pande for raising "unrealistic" demands.

Akhilesh had earlier offered seven seats to RLD, which is a major electoral force in the 'Jat' dominated western Uttar Pradesh. RLD is likely to contest from Baghpat, Mathura, Amroha, Bijnor, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut and Kairana. Almost all the seats given to the RLD have a sizable presence of Muslim and Jat voters.

Sources said that the SP-RLD alliance could also accommodate firebrand Dalit leader Chandrashekhar alias Ravan and leave a seat or two to him and his outfit, which commands considerable influence over the Dalit community in the western districts of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Meerut, Baghpat and some others.

During the negotiations with Congress' alliance panel, SP negotiators Ramgopal Yadav and Javed Ali Khan had suggested that their party could leave only less than ten seats and asked the ally to touch base with Akhilesh if they insist on more seats. Congress had handed over a list of 15 seats as their top priority to the SP.

The SP also sought “token representation” in Madhya Pradesh, arguing that it was in Congress’ interest that they accommodate them especially when a Yadav – BJP’s Mohan Yadav – is the Chief Minister. A senior SP leader said they were demanding one seat like Tikamgarh where the Congress lost last time by around 3.5 lakh votes.

The leader reasoned that such a gesture would go down well with the Yadav community and Akhilesh could come for joint campaign with Congress, which could bring Yadavs who were angry with it following its decision not to leave seats for SP in the recently concluded Assembly elections. Sources said SP has put the proposal on the negotiation table but it would not act as a deal breaker in UP. “It is in Congress' interest to give a seat to us,” the SP leader said