SP irked with Congress over 'unrealistic' demands for UP Lok Sabha seats

New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party is willing to leave only less than ten seats for the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh. Its negotiators have told its I.N.D.I.A. ally to touch base with Akhilesh Yadav if they insist on more seats, sources said on Thursday.

The SP is irked with Congress for putting around two dozen seats, including its stronghold, as “first priority” choices on the negotiation table and especially with General Secretary in-charge Avinash Pande and UP Congress chief Ajai Rai for raising “unrealistic” demands, they said.

SP leaders Ramgopal Yadav and Javed Ali Khan held a third meeting with the Congress’ National Alliance Committee here on Thursday, the second one in the past two days. Interestingly, both Pande and Rai were conspicuous for their absence in the meeting though they attended the one on Wednesday.

No dates have been fixed for another meeting but leaders are in agreement to meet again if the need arises while putting the ball in Congress's court to take their grievances to Akhilesh.

Incidentally, sources said, Congress has not completely shut the doors on negotiating with the BSP though its chief Mayawati has announced that her party will contest alone. BSP is learnt to have hinted that it may look at talks if Congress is willing to share seats in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana.

Sources said the Congress had shared a list of seats it wanted to contest priority-wise and the “first priority” constituencies were around 24, in which they were particularly interested in around 15. The SP, however, felt that the list prepared by Pande was “unrealistic”, as it contained several seats that are traditional SP strongholds.

On Thursday, sources said the SP communicated to the Congress that it can spare only a very few seats. Earlier, it had identified Rae Bareli, Amethi, Fatehpur Sikri and Kanpur where Congress has either won or come second as potential seats for the party.

When asked, a senior leader told DH, “The offer was in single digits. You can say the offer was less than ten seats. Congress leaders were of the view that it was too less but were told that if they needed more seats, the negotiators were not in a position to promise and Congress top leaders should get in touch with party chief Akhilesh Yadav.”

The SP also sought “token representation” in Madhya Pradesh, arguing that it was in Congress’ interest that they accommodate them, especially when a Yadav – BJP’s Mohan Yadav – is the Chief Minister. A senior SP leader said they were demanding one seat like Tikamgarh where the Congress lost last time by around 3.5 lakh votes.

The leader reasoned that such a gesture would go down well with the Yadav community and Akhilesh could come for a joint campaign with Congress, which could bring Yadavs who were angry with it following its decision not to leave seats for SP in the recently concluded Assembly elections.

Sources said SP has put the proposal on the negotiation table but it would not act as a deal breaker in UP. “It is in Congress' interest to give a seat to us,” the SP leader said.

SP sources said Pande and Rai had made the negotiations a little troublesome but senior leaders like Mukul Wasnik, Salman Khurshid and Mohan Prakash were more realistic and accommodative to the Akhilesh-led party.