Congress, SP work out seat-sharing criteria for UP, identify winnability as key factor

The leader said that at the meeting, it was decided that the parties should present a list of seats that they could potentially win, along with the names of their probable candidates.

“After this, it will be assessed which party’s candidate would be suitable as per the social and demographic conditions of the constituency concerned,” another SP leader said.

The leader went on to explain, “If a seat has a significant OBC population, we will see which party has a more popular OBC candidate.”

The Congress had performed poorly in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls in UP, winning two and one seats respectively, and is now learnt to be highlighting its performance from the 2009 elections, when it had won 21 seats.

The Congress is currently confined to the Rae Bareli seat, currently held by senior party leader Sonia Gandhi, which has been a party bastion for decades now.

The SP too, it is learnt, is not highlighting its performance of the past two Lok Sabha polls — it had won five seats both times.

In 2019, the SP had contested only on 37 seats, and had left 38 seats to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) with which it had formed an alliance. The BSP ended up winning 10 seats.

The SP’s vote share was higher than the Congress the last two times. In 2014, the SP secured 22.35% of votes, while the Congress got a 7.53% vote share. The SP polled 18.11% votes in 2014, whereas the Congress just got 6.36% votes.

In 2009, the SP had won 23 seats.

An SP leader said the party would agree to leave Amethi and Rae Bareli for the Congress if members from the “Gandhi family are fielded”. Likewise, the Congress is also expected to not ask for the seats that SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and other members of his family would contest.

Assembly poll performance

A senior SP leader said the party could get a chunk of the Lok Sabha seats, if the Assembly poll performance is considered.

“The Congress and the SP had contested separately in the 2022 Assembly elections. The SP had an alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and other smaller parties. So, an idea has been discussed to assess the strength of the parties in each Lok Sabha constituency according to their performances in the Assembly segments that fall within each Lok Sabha seat. If calculated that way, SP would be able to make a claim on the maximum Lok Sabha seats,” said a senior SP leader.

In the 2022 polls, the SP had won 111 seats and got a vote share of 32%. Its alliance partner RLD had won eight seats, getting a vote share of 2.85%. The Congress had contested 399 seats but won just one seat, while its vote share had dropped to 2.33%.

The SP also has to take into account the seats it would allocate to the RLD, which is its alliance partner. A senior SP leader said that “allocating seats to RLD would not be difficult”, with the latter’s influence being primarily in western UP.

The SP and the BSP had fallen out after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Mayawati has distanced herself from the Opposition INDIA grouping but the Congress is said to be keen on inducing the BSP also into it. The Congress feels that aligning with the BSP would help the two consolidate the Dalit vote behind them, as well as ensure that the Muslim vote is not fragmented.

“Congress has assured that no decision on BSP will be taken without consulting the SP,” said an SP leader, referring to

his party’s reservation over the BSP’s inclusion in the INDIA bloc.

The Congress and the SP will again hold their seat-sharing talks on Friday.