UP: Cong, RLD seek more seats for Lok Sabha polls

Lucknow: The Congress and the Rashtriya Lok Dal on Monday appeared unsatisfied with the 18 seats offered to the two I.N.D.I.A bloc allies in Uttar Pradesh by the Samajwadi Party in seat-sharing arrangements for the Lok Sabha polls.

The SP has offered 11 seats to the Congress and seven seats to the RLD for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The Congress has demanded that it should be given at least 22 seats it had won in 2009, while the RLD wants eight seats in the politically sensitive state which has 80 Lok Sabha constituencies.

'Positive talks are going on regarding seat sharing. We want that the party should contest on more than 22 seats, which it had won in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in the state. The party's central leadership is in talks with the Samajwadi Party about this,' UP Congress chief Ajay Rai told PTI on Monday.

Expressing disagreement over the seats offered to it by the SP, a senior RLD leader said the party wants one more seat.

'We want to contest from Deoria Lok Sabha seat. Our state unit chief Ramashish Rai had contested from there in 2004 on a Congress ticket, and had given a tough fight to his political opponents...the political equation is in favour of Rai, and he can throw surprising results,' the RLD leader told PTI.

According to RLD leaders, the SP has offered them the seats of Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar, Mathura, Kairana, Hathras, Bijnor and Amroha.

"The party leaders wonder how the SP has offered them the Amroha seat especially when the sitting MP Danish Ali is cosying up with the Congress. Of the seven seats offered to the RLD, in three seats the SP will field its candidates on RLD symbol," another RLD leader said, and added that "RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary is not very happy with what is offered to them."

Meanwhile, SP's chief spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary, when asked that Congress is demanding more than 22 seats, said, "The number of seats given by the SP will remain the same." On the RLD's demand for the Deoria seat, Chaudhary said, "The seat-sharing arrangement with RLD has already been decided. Everything was decided in presence of (RLD chief) Jayant Chaudhary." He also said the SP will stick to the 11+7 seats formula to allies, and as of now there are 'no further modifications in this'.

The SP on Saturday announced that it has offered 11 Lok Sabha seats to the Congress in UP, with party chief Akhilesh Yadav asserting that their alliance is 'off to a good start'.

Yadav said in a post in Hindi on X, "Our cordial alliance with the Congress is off to a good start with 11 strong seats. This trend will move forward with the winning equation. 'INDIA' team and 'PDA' (Picchda, Dalit, Alpasankhyak) strategy will change history."

SP spokesperson Chaudhary also said the party's top leadership is in continuous touch with the Congress.

"We have given 11 seats to the Congress (in UP) and seven seats to the RLD. The SP will contest 62 seats in the Lok Sabha elections," Chaudhary said.

In the current Lok Sabha, the SP has three MPs and the Bahujan Samaj Party has 10 MPs. Sonia Gandhi is the lone Congress MP from the state representing Rae Bareli constituency. The Apna Dal (Sonelal) has two Lok Sabha MPs, while the BJP won 64 seats in the state.