Cong 17 seats in UP deal: Why even SP help may not take party far, going by 2019

The extended saga of the Opposition INDIA bloc’s seat-sharing talks in Uttar Pradesh, that saw the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) switch sides to the NDA and senior partner Samajwadi Party (SP) announce its candidates before its seat-sharing deal with the Congress was concluded, was finally sealed last week.

The SP and its smaller allies will contest 63 of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, leaving 17 for the Congress. These 17 seats include Raebareli, Amethi, Kanpur, Fatehpur Sikri, Bansgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj (previously known as Allahabad), Maharajganj, Varanasi, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria.

While the Congress, which earlier reports suggested was being offered just 11 seats by the SP, will be happy, a closer look at the 17 constituencies shows that its alliance with the SP has its work cut out for it. Since 2012, the BJP has been the dominant player in most of these seats.

Lok Sabha poll performance: 2019

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, barring its win in the Raebareli stronghold from where Sonia Gandhi was the candidate, the Congress lost the remaining 15 seats it contested. While the BJP won 14 of the 17 seats in the Congress share now, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won 2.

In fact, the Congress could cross more than 15% of the vote share in just 5 seats – the highest being Raebareli at 56.5%; followed by Amethi at 44.1% (from where Rahul Gandhi lost to the BJP’s Smriti Irani); and Kanpur at 37.9%. In 9 seats, it did not even cross the 10% mark.

The BJP, on the other hand, won 11 of these seats with more than 50% of the vote share.

Even combining the SP and Congress vote shares, the INDIA bloc would have come out the winner in just 1 seat, Barabanki, implying that even the SP doesn’t have