Samajwadi Party to tie-up only with Congress for UP poll, ignores RLD
LUCKNOW: Putting all speculations to rest, the Samajwadi Party and Congress sealed their pre-poll alliance for UP elections. According to highly placed sources, as per the deal, which was finalised on Thursday evening, SP is likely to spare 103 seats for the grand old party and would contest on the remaining 300.
Ajit Singh-led RLD will have no role in the alliance which would be formally announced on Friday. Congress's UP in charge Ghulam Nabi Azad will come to Lucknow on Friday to make a joint announcemnt along with Chief Minister and SP national president Akhilesh Yadav. With SP-Cong deal already finalised, the chances of a grand alliance among anti-BJP 'secular parties' ahead of crucial elections has ended.
Emerging from a marathon six-hour meeting with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, senior Samajwadi Party leader and party’s national vice-president Kiranmoy Nanda confirmed that the party would enter into an alliance only with Congress party in the state. “ Our alliance will only be with the Congress party in the upcoming Assembly elections in UP and no other political outfit,” said Nanda while talking to media persons. TNIE had reported earlier that SP was not keen on roping in RLD as the alliance partner and that RLD’s role was not on CM’s agenda while thrashing out a seat sharing formula with Congress on Wednesday night.
Sources also said the RLD was seeking more seats than what SP was ready to spare so it had left it to the Congress to part seats to the Jat party from its share of seats. As per the highly placed sources, Congress was in favour of stitching up a grand alliance in UP on the lines of Bihar taking the smaller outfits like RLD, JD-U of Nitish Kumar and Apna Dal (Krishna Patel faction) under the umbrella. However, the Samajwadi Party leadership was a bit cagey as it suspected that RLD may switch loyalty in case of a hung Assembly after the elections. On the finalisation of tickets and names of party candidates, Nanda said that Samajwadis had already prepared the list. “Now we are waiting for the Congress to decided their candidates.
I think the final list will be out by tomorrow (Friday),” he said. However, Nanda refused to divulge the details of the seats on which the alliance would work saying that it would be formally announced by the Chief Minister himself. Expressing the hope that tie-up would help SP in returning to power with absolute majority, Nanda said that the tie-up would go a long way with “our eyes on 2019 general elections as well.” He added that SP’s manifesto was also ready and it would be released shortly.