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SP, Cong seat-sharing likely to continue in U.P. assembly bypolls
The alliance will continue. Will be in play in the forthcoming bypolls also. And there will be seat-sharing discussions, said U.P. Congress president Ajay Rai
With nine MLAs from Uttar Pradesh emerging victorious in the recently concluded 2024 Lok Sabha polls, bypolls, which is a sort of mini-assembly election, are on the anvil in the state that is again likely to be the NDA vs the INDIA bloc.
It seems so as the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress—INDIA bloc partners—have indicated that their alliance will continue and now there will be seat sharing between the two in bypolls too.
Four SP MLAs, three BJP MLAs, and one each RLD and NISHAD party MLAs have won the Lok Sabha polls in the state. After the INDIA bloc’s spectacular performance that trumped the ruling BJP-led NDA alliance in Uttar Pradesh, the mini-assembly election battle too is likely to be bipolar and fierce.
“The alliance will continue. Will be in play in the forthcoming bypolls also. And there will be seat-sharing discussions,” said U.P. Congress president Ajay Rai.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has resigned from his Karnal assembly seat to retain the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat. The other seats that have fallen vacant or will become so in days to come are Khair (Aligarh), Kundarki (Moradabad), Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar), Phulpur (Prayagraj), Ghaziabad (Ghaziabad), Majhawan (Mirzapur), Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar) and Milkipur (Ayodhya) assembly seats.
Thereafter, the Election Commission will announce bypolls. While the Congress had not won any of these nine seats in 2017 (when the SP-Congress contested together) or in the 2022 U.P. assembly polls, the Congress had contested Ghaziabad and Khair seats unsuccessfully under the SP-Cong pre-poll pact in 2017.
In the 2024 LS polls also, the SP gave the Ghaziabad LS seat to the Congress which it lost. The Congress has won the Ghaziabad assembly seat six times since 1957 and the SP only once in 2004, while the Congress won the Khair seat thrice and the SP is yet to taste poll success there.
A Congress source said: “The Congress is likely to claim at least these two seats and pitch for more. The alliance is going strong. The BJP is weak. The INDIA bloc in U.P. is already in place and harmonious and there’s not likely to be any tugs-of-war or struggle within the alliance now.”
SP national secretary and party’s chief spokesperson, Rajendra Chaudhary said: “Yes, the alliance continues and there will be seat-sharing between the SP and Congress in the bypolls as well”.
The 2024 LS polls were the first time since 2017 that the Samajwadi Party’s pre-poll alliance succeeded and showed togetherness beyond the election results. The SP’s alliance with the Congress in 2017 U.P. assembly polls collapsed soon after the alliance’s failure.
The SP lost power by winning only 47 seats and the Congress could bag won only 7 seats back then. The BJP formed the majority government in the state. Then, the SP-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) pre-poll alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls collapsed immediately after the poll results in which the SP could bag only 5 seats while the BSP won 10.
Now, the SP-Congress alliance in U.P. within the INDIA bloc yielded surprising results as the two partners trumped the BJP. The SP won 37 seats and emerged as the single largest party in the state relegating the BJP to second position with 33 seats. With the Congress bagging six seats, the INDIA bloc’s joint tally touched 43-seat mark which is more than the ruling NDA’s tally of 36 (Rashtriya Lok Dal 2 and Apna Dal (S) one).
The non-aligned Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) won one seat. Uttar Pradesh has 80 Lok Sabha seats. Currently, the SP has 107 members in the 403-member state assembly while the Congress has just 2. The BJP has 252 members.
