Uttar Pradesh Elections 2017: SP Gives 105 Seats to Congress, Grand Alliance Takes Off

Lucknow: After days of hard bargaining, the Congress sealed a pre-poll alliance with the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, pitchforking the combo as a hot favourite in the state Assembly elections slated to begin next month.

Akhilesh confirmed the deal at a function to release the SP manifesto for the assembly polls in Lucknow on Sunday. Curiously, SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and his brother Shivpal Yadav stayed away from the function. Reports from Lucknow indicate that Akhilesh had sent veteran leader Azam Khan to meet Mulayam, but he refused to attend.

Addressing party workers, Akhilesh took a dig at BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “There are parties with no promises. There are parties who came to power with the promise of achche din (good days). It has been three years, but in the name of development, they made us hold the broom, do yoga. Yes, they might announce something in the Budget,” he said.

The talks of SP-Congress alliance have been doing the rounds for a few months now and Mulayam had categorically denied having any truck with Congress while Akhilesh had indicated he was in favour of a “grand coalition to take on communal forces.”

In the 2012 Assembly elections, Samajwadi Party had scored 29% votes in seats contested winning 224 out of the 401 seats it contested. BJP won 15% votes to get 47 seats while Congress managed to win 28 seats with 13% votes. BSP had notched up 25% votes, but won only 80 of the 403 seats it contested.

Ground reports indicate Akhilesh’s popularity is at an all-time high after he conclusively won a bitter faction war that saw him ejecting father Mulayam as the party’s national president last week.

Sources said SP was miffed as Congress chose bureaucrats like Dhiraj Srivastava, a Rajasthan cadre officer and in-charge of grievance cell of Rae Bareli and Amethi, to carry on the negotiations instead of deputing senior leaders who understand the nuances of political deal-making. A shocked Congress watched as SP released seats for five phases, including in the Gandhi family pocket boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli.

However, a breakthrough was achieved when Sonia Gandhi personally chose to intervene in the talks on Saturday evening, convincing Akhilesh to allocate 100-plus seats to the Grand Old Party.

SP and Congress hope that the Grand Alliance will mop up the core OBC votes of Samajwadi besides the 18% Muslim votes. Akhilesh’s image as India’s youngest chief minister will make him a natural choice for youth across caste and class divisions, claim the architects of the alliance.