Following in the footsteps of Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party has also set terms for an alliance with Congress in Uttar Pradesh for the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
The SP has conveyed to the Congress that any electoral alliance will be meaningful only if it is for three poll-bound states and Uttar Pradesh. Three states, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will go to polls in November.
A senior SP leader said that the party cadre wanted seats from the Congress in poll-bound Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in exchange for a pact in UP, where the SP already has an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party.
“After fighting against each other in these states, an alliance only for UP will look absurd,” SP general secretary Kiranmoy Nanda said.
The SP wants to spread its wings in the three Hindi-speaking states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh where assembly elections are due next month.
Akhilesh has toured Madhya Pradesh several times in the last couple of months, including a recent one to Shahdole district of MP.
Earlier, the BSP, too, demanded a pan-India pact with the Congress as the two sides were negotiating alliance in poll-bound states.
BSP chief Mayawati eventually picked Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress over the Congress in Chhattisgarh, and announced candidates for 22 seats in Madhya Pradesh.
Congress leaders, however, have not given up hopes of a wider alliance with the BSP. Leaders from the SP and Congress also maintained that they are hoping to hammer out a deal in the coming weeks.
In mid-September, senior leaders from Congress and SP met to discuss the modalities of a possible alliance. A Congress functionary said that the talks did not yield the desired result as the SP was “wary about caste equations and distribution of seats”.
Akhilesh had said in Shahdole last week that it was the responsibility of Congress to see how people with similar ideology could come together.
Former Rajya Sabha member of SP, Kiranmoy Nanda, said that the party had as a strong foothold in some areas of these poll-bound states.
“If the Congress wants unity, it has to be in other states too where we want a share in the alliance. Unity can’t be a one-way traffic that will happen in UP at the convenience of the Congress,” he quipped.
Senior Congress leader PL Punia said that the Congress wanted to stitch together all opposition parties to fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“But this doesn’t mean that if we are left alone we are pushovers. Please remember that in 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Congress did not have any alliance in UP yet it managed to win 23 seats while the SP won 21 and BSP got 20 seats,” he said.
Punia, a Rajya Sabha member from UP, is looking after Chhattisgarh affairs for the Congress.
Another senior Congress functionary said, “What the SP leaders are saying is nothing but posturing amid talks. These issues will finally have no reflection when the parties decide to go for an alliance.”
A political analyst said that a tie-up in other states may help the SP as it cares only about Uttar Pradesh and does not care much about Congress. Its strength in UP has given the SP 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 the Congress doesn’t have an alliance with them in UP,” he said