The Samajwadi Party and the Congress will be holding the next round of seat-sharing talks in Delhi on Wednesday (January 17). This is the third round of talks, and the meeting will be held at Congress Rajya Sabha MP Mukul Wasnik’s residence in Delhi.
However, the Congress won’t be holding direct talks about seat sharing with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which is an ally of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. The talks with the RLD will be done through the Samajwadi Party.
Uttar Pradesh has 80 Lok Sabha seats, which is the highest in the country. The BJP and its ally Apna Dal (S) had won 62 out of the 80 seats in 2019, while the SP-BSP alliance won 15 seats and the Congress could only win one.
The Samajwadi Party had on January 12 reconstituted the panel for holding talks on seat sharing with the Congress. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav inducted party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav and former minister Lalji Verma besides Javed Ali Khan into the panel.
The other members in the panel are SP MLA Sangram Singh Yadav, and former MLC Udaivir Singh. The virtual meeting of the INDIA block is scheduled for Saturday.
The Congress and the SP reached consensus that the performance in the 2022 UP assembly elections, the hold of the parties in specific seats as well as potential candidates would be the major criteria for seat sharing.
SP sources said that the party was “flexible” and would accommodate “winnable” candidates. At the meeting, it was decided that the parties should present a list of seats that they could potentially win, along with the names of their probable candidates.
An SP leader said, “After this exercise is completed, it will be assessed which party’s candidate will be suitable as per the social and demographic conditions of the constituency concerned. If a seat has a significant OBC population, we will see which party has a more popular OBC candidate.”
The Congress had performed poorly in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls in UP, winning two and one seats respectively, and is now learnt to be highlighting its performance from the 2009 elections, when it had won 21 seats.
The Congress is currently confined to the Rae Bareli seat, held by senior leader Sonia Gandhi.
The SP has decided to concede Amethi and Rae Bareli for the Congress if members from the Gandhi family are fielded. Likewise, the Congress is also expected to not ask for the seats in the Yadav belt comprising Etawah, Mainpuri, Etah and Firozabad.
In the 2022 UP assembly polls, the SP had won 111 seats with a vote share of 32%. Its alliance partner RLD had won eight seats with a vote share of 2.85%. The Congress had contested 399 seats but won just one, while its vote share dropped to 2.33%.
