Differences over seat-sharing may be holding up a potential alliance between the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Congress ahead of elections in Uttar Pradesh early next year, but Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is leaving a window open for a last-minute pre-poll arrangement. In his list of probable candidates submitted to Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav on Sunday, he has left 90-odd seats for “prospective allies”, mainly the grand old party.
Contrary to reports in the media, Akhilesh Yadav’s list does not include all 403 Assembly seats in the state but has the names of 313 candidates, according to party officials. “The remaining 90 seats have been left for prospective allies, which are the Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal,” said a senior Samajwadi Party leader considered close to the chief minister.
According to these party officials, Mulayam Singh Yadav – who had announced on November 10 that the party would not be forming any alliances ahead of polls – is not in favour of giving more than 10 seats to the Rashtriya Lok Dal. But Akhilesh Yadav has been insisting that they be more accommodative of the Ajit Singh-led party so that the alliance looks like a grand secular front. The smaller party had won nine seats in the last Assembly elections in 2012.
As for the Congress, its demand is well above the 90 seats left by the chief minister for prospective allies. Despite this, Akhilesh Yadav’s move is significant for the simple reason that it keeps the door for an alliance open.
Congress’ demand
The Congress has reportedly demanded nearly 100 seats, including 28 constituencies where it has sitting MLAs and 31 others where it came second in the 2012 elections. But the Samajwadi Party was the victor in 15 of these 31 seats, and is willing to give up its claim on only a few of them. Just before the seat-sharing talks came to a standstill, the ruling party had indicated that it could entertain the Congress’ claim only with regard to some seats in Rae Bareli and Amethi – the Lok Sabha constituencies of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi – that it had won by defeating the latter. In the candidate list submitted to the party chief, Akhilesh Yadav has left the Assembly constituencies of Amethi Sadar and Rae Bareli Sadar vacant – both seats his party had won in 2012.
According to the party officials, Amethi MLA and state cabinet minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati’s name has been omitted from the list. Prajapati, considered close to Mulayam Singh Yadav, was sacked by Akhilesh Yadav in September after complaints of corruption against him but re-inducted a few days later after a patch-up with the chief minister. The officials said Prajapati might be made a member of the state Legislative Council in lieu of vacating his seat for the Congress.
The Samajwadi Party MLA from Rae Bareli, Akhilesh Singh, has already announced his decision not to contest the upcoming polls and to vacate the seat for his daughter Aditi Singh, who joined the Congress in August.
In 2012, the Congress had won two Assembly segments, Tiloi and Jagdishpur, of the Amethi parliamentary seat while losing the remaining three – Salon, Gauriganj and Amethi Sadar – to the Samajwadi Party. In Rae Bareli, it had lost all five Assembly segments, four of them to the Samajwadi Party again.
