SP, Cong resume seat-sharing talks

The Congress and Samajwadi Party have resumed seat-sharing talks for the by-elections to nine Uttar Pradesh assembly seats.

A final decision is expected after SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and senior Congress leaders Rahul or Priyanka Gandhi approve the arrangement on the seat-sharing issue.

“Yes, talks are on for seat-sharing between Congress and SP. We hope the matter will be finalized soon,” said Ajay Rai, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president, after the Election Commission announced the by-poll schedule on Tuesday.

Sources suggest the SP is currently inclined to offer two seats to Congress. It has unilaterally announced candidates for six seats, including Milkipur (where the by-poll has been withheld due to an election petition), leaving only four seats open for negotiations. Congress is concerned about getting fewer seats, as it has staked claim to five seats but may have to accept just two.

Despite this, Congress has little to lose, as it had no members on any of these seats. In the 2022 UP assembly elections, the party’s best performance among these constituencies was in Ghaziabad, where it secured over 11,000 votes, while in most others it received fewer than 5,000 votes. Party leaders, however, now believe the public mood has shifted in their favor since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, citing good responses to the Samvidhan Sabha (Save Constitution conventions) held in seven of these constituencies. They also confirmed that Congress will support alliance candidates in all by-poll seats.

However, political analyst Prof. SK Dwivedi, former head of the political science department at Lucknow University, noted that Congress’s poor performance in the Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir elections has weakened its bargaining power. “The SP now has the upper hand, and Congress has no option but to accept what the SP offers in these by-elections,” he said.