Amid rising tension between the Opposition INDIA bloc allies, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP), over the collapse of their alliance talks for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, SP president Akhilesh Yadav Thursday accused the Congress of having “cheated” his party. Akhilesh's statement came soon after UP Congress chief Ajay Rai asked his party to withdraw from the MP fray in favour of the grand old party, saying the SP did not have any base there. Rai also said that as an INDIA bloc partner the SP should rally behind the Congress if it wants to fight the ruling BJP in MP. Speaking to reporters in Sitapur Thursday, Akhilesh hit out at the Congress and slammed Rai. “Which leader are you talking about? The state president (Ajay Rai) has no ‘haisiyat’ (status). He was not there at the meeting (of INDIA) in Patna or Mumbai. What does he know about the INDIA alliance,” he said, adding that “Congress should not get statements made by their ‘chirkut’ (small-time) leaders about our party.” The SP chief also went after the Congress's MP heavyweights and ex-chief ministers, Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh, charging that they kept the SP leaders waiting till 1 am, when they had gone to meet them for seat-sharing talks. “This means that you’re cheating other parties. These people are hand in glove with BJP. The Congress people are with BJP. If I had known that the alliance is not at the state level, then I wouldn’t have sent SP leaders to Digvijay Singh ji or Kamal Nath ji,” he said. Akhilesh claimed that the Congress camp had indicated that six seats could be allotted to the SP, which would include its lone sitting seat. He also said if the INDIA alliance is only meant for the national elections and not the state polls, then the SP would pay back in the same coin over the UP seat-sharing in the Lok Sabha polls. The fissures between the two allies became evident Sunday, when the Congress announced candidates for four of the seven seats in MP, where the SP has already declared candidates. In a strong signal to its INDIA ally, the SP then declared a list of nine candidates. On Wednesday, the SP released a list of 22 more candidates. Akhilesh on Tuesday said the Congress must clarify its stand on the alliance among the INDIA bloc partners and whether the sharing of seats would be applicable at the state or the national level. On Wednesday, speaking to The India Express, Ajay Rai said, “Congress is standing with strength in Madhya Pradesh, so Samajwadi Party should support Congress as part of INDIA alliance, instead of contesting on seats when they have no base there.” As for Akhilesh's warning, he said, “One should wait for Lok Sabha elections and let the results of five state polls come.” Rai also said that while a decision about the alliance in UP for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is to be taken by the Congress high command, the party's UP unit is preparing to contest on all 80 parliamentary seats in the state. Responding to the SP camp's charge that the Congress did not give them even the one seat that they had won in MP in the 2018 polls, Rai said even that MLA had later defected to the ruling BJP. “The fight in MP has long been between Congress and BJP. So instead of contesting on its own SP should support Congress,” he said. The SP argues that by going by its MP rationale, the Congress with just one MP and two MLAs in UP should support the former in UP where it is the BJP's principal rival. In the 2017 UP polls, the then incumbent SP had fought the elections in alliance with the Congress, with both Akhilesh and Rahul Gandhi addressing joint rallies in favour of the alliance candidates. Out of 403 seats, the SP had contested 311 seats while the Congress fought from 114 seats. There were then still 11 seats on which both of them fielded their candidates. In last month's Assembly bypolls, the Congress supported the SP in UP's Ghosi and refrained from fielding its candidate. SP candidate Sudhakar Singh trounced the BJP's heavyweight OBC leader Dara Singh Chauhan by 42,759 votes there. In Uttarakhand's Bagheshwar bypoll, however, despite being a marginal player in state politics, the SP fielded its candidate, who could secure just 637 votes. The ruling BJP managed to retain the seat, defeating the Congress by 2,405 votes. In the wake of these bypoll results, Rai had blamed the SP for the Congress's loss in Bageshwar, charging the SP with not following the “gathbandhan (alliance) dharma” in contrast to his party's “gesture” in the Ghosi bypoll. On Wednesday, SP leader and ex-MLA Gayadeen Anuragi returned to the Congress in Rai's presence. Anuragi had switched to the SP from the Congress before the 2022 Assembly polls.
