11 for Congress: Akhilesh says seat-sharing deal for UP in place

Amidst the likely return of the Janata Dal (United)’s Nitish Kumar to the BJP and seat-sharing troubles in West Bengal and Punjab,the INDIA bloc found one bright spot on Saturday. Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav announced that his party was giving 11 Lok Sabha to the Congress in the coming polls.

Taking to X, Yadav said, “Our cordial alliance with Congress is making a good start with 11 strong seats… This trend will move forward with the winning equation. ‘India’ team and ‘PDA (Pichada (backwards), Dalits and Alpasankhyaks (minorities)’, ‘ strategy will change history.”

With this development, INDIA bloc has seemingly made major progress in Uttar Pradesh. If the Congress agrees to the deal, UP will be the first state where INDIA parties will have a seat-sharing arrangement.

The Congress has officially not confirmed the number. However, reacting to Yadav’s tweet, UP Congress chief Ajay Rai said, “(Congress leader) Mukul Wasnik-led national alliance committee of Congress is taking decision in this matter. The dialogue is going on in a very positive atmosphere and this is going to give a good and strong result very soon.”

Yadav’s announcement comes a week after the SP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), also an INDIA bloc member, announced that the latter was going to contest in seven seats as part of seat-sharing arrangements.

Considering these numbers, the SP is likely to contest on the remaining 62 seats in Uttar Pradesh and play the leading role in the state, which has the most number of Lok Sabha seats (80).

In the 2019 polls, the Congress had won only one seat in UP, while the SP had won five.

A breakthrough
Relations between the SP and the Congress had turned bitter after their discussions on an alliance for the