In a bind over UP seats, Cong litany of woes: ‘unwinnability’, lack of key aspirants, cold SP

More than a week after the INDIA alliance partners Samajwadi Party and Congress sealed their seat-sharing agreement for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress continues to be in the doldrums in the state.

Under the pact, the SP has allotted 17 seats out of 80 to the Congress, keeping the remaining 63 seats for itself.

However, a section of the state Congress feels that the party has not got the seats it desired, pointing to at least six seats where it has never won after 1980s. While in the Prayagraj, Amroha, Bulandshahr, Saharanpur and Deoria seats, the Congress had last registered victory in the 1984 polls, the party had last won from the Sitapur constituency in 1989.

There are several seats where the Congress does not seem to expect any support from the SP, which also does not have a significant base there.

Sitapur was last won by the SP in 1996. This constituency has since been won by the BSP or the BJP candidates. Sitapur has a significant population of the Kurmi votes.

A Congress leader said while the party was seeking Lakhimpur Kheri – where it managed to induct prominent Kurmi (OBC) leader and ex-SP MP Ravi Verma and his daughter Purvi into the party fold – it was instead allotted the neighbouring Sitapur seat. Sources said the party would now convince Verma to contest from Sitapur, hoping that he would attract the Kurmi votes in this seat as well as in neighbouring Barabanki, from where Tanuj Punia, son of ex-MP P L Punia, is an aspirant.

While Saharanpur was last won by the SP’s Rasheed Masood in 2004, the seat has been won either by the BSP or the BJP since then. After the demise of Rasheed in 2020, Imran Masood has emerged as a key minority face from this region, who is now with the Congress