Decode Politics: Why SP dialled down heat to part with 17 UP seats for Cong

The Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) finally reached a seat-sharing agreement on Thursday, ending days of speculation about their alliance.

The grand old party seems to have emerged as a winner in the tense bargain after the SP parted with 17 Lok Sabha seats while taking one for itself in Madhya Pradesh. The Akhilesh Yadav-led party had been claiming for months that the Congress was not a strong force in Uttar Pradesh and should demand seats accordingly. On January 30, the SP sprang a surprise after it “unilaterally” announced that it would give the Congress just 11 Lok Sabha seats out of a total of 80 in the state.

The Congress will now contest Raebareli, Amethi, Kanpur, Fatehpur Sikri, Bansgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Maharajganj, Varanasi, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria seats.

Why did SP climb down from tough stance?

SP leaders say one of the main reasons for giving the Congress a larger share was the fear of a split in the Muslim vote. In the 2022 Assembly polls, the SP relied heavily on the Muslim vote, and seemed to have garnered it significantly as the party emerged victorious in seats where the community is in sizeable numbers. As many as 30 Muslim SP candidates won the elections.

With the Congress also eyeing the Muslim vote by holding programmes to reach out to them and meeting clerics, the SP feared it would be a bigger loser if the votes of the community are divided.

Many believe that a major chunk of the 32.06% votes that the SP got in 2022 came from the Muslim community, which makes up around 20% of the state’s population. “Given that this is a Lok Sabha election, we knew that we may end up losing seats if a chunk of Muslim votes go towards the Congress,” a