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The Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) finally reached a seat-sharing agreement on Thursday, ending days of speculation about their alliance.
The grand old party seems to have emerged as a winner in the tense bargain after the SP parted with 17 Lok Sabha seats while taking one for itself in Madhya Pradesh. The Akhilesh Yadav-led party had been claiming for months that the Congress was not a strong force in Uttar Pradesh and should demand seats accordingly. On January 30, the SP sprang a surprise after it “unilaterally” announced that it would give the Congress just 11 Lok Sabha seats out of a total of 80 in the state.
The Congress will now contest Raebareli, Amethi, Kanpur, Fatehpur Sikri, Bansgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Maharajganj, Varanasi, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria seats.
Why did SP climb down from tough stance?
SP leaders say one of the main reasons for giving the Congress a larger share was the fear of a split in the Muslim vote. In the 2022 Assembly polls, the SP relied heavily on the Muslim vote, and seemed to have garnered it significantly as the party emerged victorious in seats where the community is in sizeable numbers. As many as 30 Muslim SP candidates won the elections.
With the Congress also eyeing the Muslim vote by holding programmes to reach out to them and meeting clerics, the SP feared it would be a bigger loser if the votes of the community are divided.
Many believe that a major chunk of the 32.06% votes that the SP got in 2022 came from the Muslim community, which makes up around 20% of the state’s population. “Given that this is a Lok Sabha election, we knew that we may end up losing seats if a chunk of Muslim votes go towards the Congress,” a senior SP leader said.
How has Cong fared in UP?
The Congress seems to have bargained hard and got 17 seats – a number which many SP leaders feel is “too high” for a party that won only two of the 403 Assembly seats it contested in the 2022 elections with a vote share of 2.33%. The SP, in contrast, won 111 seats and emerged as the main Opposition.
The grand old party’s performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections too was dismal as it won just
a single seat – Raebareli – with a vote share of 6.36%. Even Rahul Gandhi lost in the Congress bastion of Amethi to the BJP’s Smriti Irani by 55,000 votes.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections too, the Congress had won only two seats – Amethi (Rahul Gandhi) and Raebareli (Sonia Gandhi) and its vote share had stood at 7.53%.
While negotiating with the SP, the Congress seems to have used the 2009 Lok Sabha election results as a benchmark, when it had won 21 seats in the state.
How did RLD’s exit impact SP-Cong deal?
The Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD’s) switch to the BJP-led NDA also seems to have provided bargaining chips for the Congress. While the RLD was with the INDIA bloc, SP argued that the Congress was offered a lesser number of seats in view of the need to accommodate the RLD too. With the RLD’s exit, sources said the Congress pushed for more seats aggressively.
Five of the 17 seats – Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Saharanpur and Amroha – that the Congress will contest fall in west UP, considered to be the RLD’s stronghold. It is unlikely that the Congress would have got these seats if the RLD had remained with the INDIA bloc.
Did lack of allies push SP’s move?
In the 2022 Assembly polls, the SP had allied with several smaller parties like the Mahan Dal led by Keshav Dev Maurya, Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and the RLD keeping caste equations in mind.
However, after the SP’s Assembly poll loss, these allies drifted away. While the SBSP and RLD have joined the NDA, the Mahan Dal too snapped ties with the SP. Sources said, the lack of allies may also have prompted the SP to give the Congress more seats.
