‘Accept or reject it’: SP tells INDIA ally Cong over seat talks for Lok Sabha polls

The Samajwadi Party has put an end to seat sharing talks with INDIA alliance partner Congress for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

The Akhilesh Yadav-led party has now put the ball in Congress court after giving a final offer of 17 seats. The offer to the Congress was made on Monday, the day Rahul Gandhi was arriving in Amethi. A key negotiator from Samajwadi Party that the Congress has not responded to the offer, which is a sign of the grand old party rejecting it.

However, the Congress leadership that the alliance has not been called off. On Monday, Yadav had said that the seat sharing talks between the two parties is in an advanced stage.

“Right now, talks are going on, lists have come from them, we have also given them the list. The moment, seat distribution is done, Samajwadi Party will join their Nyaya Yatra,” the SP president had said. Hours later, the SP released its list of 11 candidates for the elections.

If the alliance does not materialise, it will be the second biggest jolt for the Congress after Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee declared her intent to contest 42 seats in West Bengal alone.

The Congress, which once dominated the political landscape in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, has been fighting for its survival. The grand old party had won 21 seats in the state in 2009, but its seat tally fell to a dismal two in 2014 when the Bharatiya Janata Party had won 282 seats due to the Modi wave. In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Sonia Gandhi was the lone Congress MP from the state as her son Rahul Gandhi lost to BJP’s Smriti Irani by more than 55,000 votes.

The Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, had contested the 2019 elections in an alliance with Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). The SP had won five seats while the BSP had won 10.