Congress keeps Raebareli, Amethi, Varanasi in 17-seat deal with Akhilesh Yadav

Congress will contest from 17 seats in Uttar Pradesh and Samajwadi Party from 63 as Mallikarjun Kharge and Akhilesh gave go-ahead.

Congress will contest from 17 seats in Uttar Pradesh as finalised and agreed upon by both the Congress and the Samajwadi Party leadership. This means the Samajwadi Party won't give any candidate on these 17 seats and the details of these seats once again trigger speculations of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra making her poll debut from RaeBareli -- after her mother Sonia Gandhi shifted to the Rajya Sabha. RaiBareli is a Congress bastion which the party won't want to lose and ensuring that there is no SP candidate might be the first step for that.

Congress and Samajwadi Party finalised seat-sharing in Uttar Pradesh in a major boost for the INDIA bloc.

Read: A phone call from Priyanka, Akhilesh's ‘all’s well' and Cong accepts 17 seats

Congress-Samajwadi seat sharing deal: Congress to contest from these 17 seats

Raebareli

Amethi

Fatehpur Sikri

Saharanpur

Prayagraj

Maharajganj

Varanasi

Amroha

Jhansi

Bulandshahr

Ghaziabad

Mathura

Sitapur

Barabanki

Kanpur

Bansgaon

Deoria

RaeBareli, Amethi and Varanasi are three crucial seats that Akhilesh ceded to the Congress. While Varanasi is the Lok Saha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amethi is the one that Rahul Gandhi in 2019 lost to BJP's Smriti Irani. RaeBareli was Sonia Gandhi's seat until she vacated it for health reasons and shifted to the Rajya Sabha.

The Congress has given the Samajwadi Party Madhya Pradesh's Khajuraho seat.

With AAP in Punjab, Delhi and Trinamool in Congress, the INDIA bloc's seat-sharing prospect hit a deadlock. Akhilesh too made an offer of 11 seats first, then made it to 15 and the final offer was 17. On 17, Akhilesh put his foot down and said he would join Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra only after Congress finalised the deal.

According to insiders, the initial deal to the Congress was 'raw' with seats where winnability was low. The telephone conversation between Akhilesh Yadav and Priyanka Gandhi helped the agreement and Congress got Sitapur, Barabanki. In the Moradabad division, the Congress was asking for two seats but has agreed on Amroha alone, PTI reported citing sources.