Lucknow: Seven years after they came together for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress have joined hands yet again for the Lok Sabha polls, with the latter being allotted 17 of the 80 seats in UP, and the SP being given one seat in Madhya Pradesh as part of the deal.
As part of the seat sharing arrangement, the Congress, apart from Amethi and Raebareli seats, represented by senior party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi over the years, has also got Varanasi, Prayagraj, Fatehpur Sikri, Saharanpur, Maharajganj, Bansgaon, Kanpur Nagar, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria as part of the seat sharing arrangement.
Speaking to media persons Wednesday, Congress’s UP in-charge Avinash Pandey said that the party will support candidates fielded by the SP and other parties in the remaining 63 seats in the state as part of the alliance in order to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“I would like to thank our national president (Mallikarjun) Khargeji and SP president Akhilesh Yadavji, along with (SP’s) Udayveer Singhji and Ram Gopal Yadavji for the positive discussions to ensure that we put up a strong front against the BJP and defeat it,” he said.
SP chief spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said that with the formation of the alliance, a message is going to the entire country that the country has to be saved.
“The country is in bad shape. Farmers and youth are on the streets. They have become the target of the policies and injustices of the BJP. To save them and others, we request voters, farmers and our sisters, who have faced injustice continuously under the BJP rule, to exercise their voting right with honesty and without bias,” he said, to the media.
Asked if Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi will fight from Raebareli and Amethi, Avinash Pandey simply said that both seats have been strongholds of the Congress, and the Gandhi family considers these as their home.
On speculation that the Congress is making claim to two more seats — Lakhimpur Kheri and Shravasti — Pandey said both sides had made some claims and if any more issues were to come up, they would be presented before the national presidents of both parties who will take a call.
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How SP got Congress to speed up seat sharing talks
The SP had released its first list of candidates on 30 January, its second list on 19 February and the third list on 20 February — in all containing the names of 31 candidates.
The third list, which included a candidate for Varanasi seat, which has now gone to the Congress, hastened the Congress into holding seat sharing talks with SP.
A senior SP leader told ThePrint on condition of anonymity that the third list containing the name of the candidate for Varanasi constituency — Surendra Singh Patel — was party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s signal to the Congress that the SP was ready to go into polls without an alliance.
“Akhileshji had denied joining the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Chandauli, and with the third list, he signalled that we don’t need the Congress. However, Rahul Gandhiji’s office intervened and ensured that the alliance goes through. The arrangement was finalised in hours and an agreement was arrived at,” said the leader.
While SP national general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav led the talks from SP’s side, former Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot represented the Congress. The talks — held just a day after the release of SP’s third list — went through several rounds before both parties arrived at a consensus over seat sharing.
Shashikant Pandey, head of department of political science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar university, told ThePrint that while the Congress is not really in a position to transfer its votes to the SP due to its weak organisational strength, the biggest benefit that the SP will get from the arrangement is that the Congress will not play spoilsport for SP candidates in Muslim-dominated seats.
He further said that in a triangular contest, absence of a Congress candidate will help the SP.
“Congress’ vote base in UP has dwindled but it still has traditional voters in some pockets where it is in a position to single-handedly win 5,000-10,000 votes. Congress got seats where it has done well in previous Lok Sabha polls, like Jhansi, Kanpur, Maharajganj, etc. Brahmins and a section of upper caste voters of UP have traditionally voted for Congress but now the BJP has made deep inroads among them,” said Pandey.
“This may help the SP gain a bit from a small section of such voters. Moreover, in case of a triangular contest in Muslim pockets, absence of a Congress candidate would help the SP gain. However, overall, the Congress does not have a major support base that can be transferred to SP,” he added.
The Congress has also been given Jat-dominated seats like Mathura and Fatehpur Sikri where the SP’s prospects were slim, he noted.
“So, although the number of seats that the Congress is getting as part of the alliance is good, it cannot be said that this will convert to victory for Congress candidates there,” said Pandey.
Advantage to SP
Political experts point out that the alliance has come as a face-saver for the SP in the backdrop of Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) exiting the INDIA alliance, and leaders like Pallavi Patel and Swami Prasad Maurya choosing to take a different line from the SP.
“With Jayant leaving the INDIA alliance, Swami Prasad Maurya announcing his own outfit and Pallavi Patel’s Apna Dal (K) taking a different line, the momentum in UP was against the SP. However, the alliance has come as a face saver,” Shashikant Pandey said.
While RLD has hinted that it will be joining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) post announcement of the Bharat Ratna being conferred to Jayant’s grandfather and former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh, Patel has said that she will abstain from voting in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls — a move set to harm the SP.
He added that bagging a seat in MP, where the SP does not have any major base, is another advantage for the party.
“Congress has a strong presence in MP and is in a direct contest with the BJP there. If SP has managed to bargain one seat for them in MP, that candidate in Khajuraho will definitely be in direct fight with the BJP,” he said.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, which was expected to put up a stiff fight against the BJP, won only 15 seats while the BJP, along with its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal), had won 64 seats back then.
That year, Sonia Gandhi’s Raebareli was the only seat the Congress won in that state.
The SP and Congress had come together for the UP-assembly polls in 2017 but the coalition was dealt a crushing blow by the BJP which won 324 seats in the 403-seat assembly while the SP-Congress could only manage to win only 57 seats.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)