Congress, SP to discuss LS seat sharing in UP

NEW DELHI: Hard bargaining is expected to be witnessed in the seat sharing talks between the Congress and Samajwadi Party beginning on Monday for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh.

The two parties which were foes till the other day, are coming together to form an alliance in the backdrop of resurgence of Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party which gained power in UP after shoring up a majority in the assembly elections last year.

Rahul Gandhi will himself lead the Congress team which will have party general secretary in charge of UP affairs Digvijay Singh and UP Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi as its members.

The SP is likely to be represented by party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, general secretary Amar Singh and another general secretary and Yadav's brother Ram Gopal Yadav.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the SP had spurned offers of the Congress for a tie up and had emerged as the single largest party in the state by bagging 39 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh.

The Congress had managed just nine seats, including Amethi and Rae Bareli -- the pocket burrows of Gandhi-Nehru family.

The Congress' decline in the state has been rapid in the past 25 years after having secured all the 85 seats in undivided UP in 1984.

Congress general secretary Digvijay singh has already expressed confidence that the seat sharing arrangement will be pragmatic and realistic, implying thereby that the Congress would have to play a second fiddle and have to be content with a far lesser role.


Source : Times Of India