Samajwadi Party and the Congress members of INDIA bloc, finally, on Wednesday, After several days of uncertainty, talks, and meetings, announced their seat-sharing formula for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. According to sources, the deadlock was resolved when Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra spoke with the president of the Akhilesh Yadav Samajwadi Party over the phone, and the alliance was confirmed.
The announcement was made in a joint press conference of the Samajwadi Party and Congress by the SP state president and national general secretary Naresh Uttam Patel and Rajendra Chaudhari, respectively, Congress state president Ajay Rai, and the All India Congress committee in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Avinash Pande.
Table of Contents
Congress seats
Both parties reached a consensus that Congress will fight for 17 seats, namely Raebareli, Amethi, Varanasi, Kanpur City, Fatehpur Sikri, Saharanpur, Basgaon, Prayag Raj, Maharaj Ganj, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahar, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki, and Deoria.
Raebareli was the only seat that the Congress party won in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. It’s also because Sonia Gandhi contested from this seat, but as she got elected to the Upper House of Parliament, it would be very interesting to see who will contest from Raebareli. There were talks that Priyanka Gandhi may contest this seat; she is not in charge of any state, and she may also make her official entry into electoral politics.
Amethi was one of the hottest seats in the 2019 general election because, from this seat, Indian National Congress President Rahul Gandhi contested against Union Minister Smriti Irani, and in this battle, Rahul Gandhi was defeated. Will he be contesting again from Amethi?
Varanasi, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi contested the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019, has been held by the Congress Party in the previous two elections, and Ajay Rai, the Uttar Pradesh Congress President, is running from Varanasi this time.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress will contest 28 seats; in the last general election of 2019, the Congress only won 1 seat in Chhindwara out of 29 seats. After the heavy defeat of the Congress party in the state assembly elections of 2023, the party has now decided to go along with the SP in the Lok Sabha elections and has been offered one seat.
Samajwadi party seats
The Samajwadi Party will contest 62 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. And one seat is expected to be given to Chandrashekhar’s party. So far, the SP has declared 31 candidates for the Lok Sabha election. Shivpal Singh Yadav, national general secretary of the Samajwadi Party and uncle of SP chief and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav, has been declared a Samajwadi Party candidate from Budaun.
Shiv Pal Singh Yadav is a veteran Samajwadi leader who has been an MLA from Jaswant Nagar in Etawah district since 1996. Earlier, Dharmendra Yadav, cousin of Akhilesh Yadav, was fielded from Budaun in the first list of candidates, but in the third list, his name was altered to his uncle’s name.
Akhilesh Yadav had made it very clear that he would join the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra of Mr. Gandhi only when seat sharing was finally agreed upon. Now that the alliance between the two parties has been formed, the Samajwadi Party is likely to join the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party got one seat in Khajuraho Lok Sabha, where Vishnu Datt Sharma, the BJP Madhya Pradesh state president, is the sitting member of parliament. In the recent assembly election of 2023, the BJP won all assembly constituencies of Khajuraho Lok Sabha. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, for the Samajwadi Party to contest from Khajuraho. The question of whether the Congress votes will shift in favor of the Samajwadi Party candidate remains.
Political turf of Uttar Pradesh in 2024
As of now, it is clear that there are two cornered fights in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections of 2024. On one side, there is the BJP-led NDA bloc, and on the other side, there is the Samajwadi party-led INDIA bloc. As compared to 2019, when SP-BSP Mahagathbandhan fought elections together, the current scenario has changed because this time Mayawati’s BSP is contesting elections all alone and is not looking in the fight.
In the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BSP could only win 1 seat. In my view, the most important factor in the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh is the Ram Mandir, which will polarize the elections, giving an advantage to the BJP. It is pretty clear that if elections are held today, the BJP-led NDA bloc is in a great advantageous position in UP.
