In UP booster for INDIA, SP and Congress stitch up alliance; Priyanka call to Akhilesh ‘deal clincher’

After weeks of tense negotiations and hard bargaining, the INDIA alliance partners Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress finalised their seat-sharing pact in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Under their agreement for UP, the Congress will contest 17 seats out of 80 in the state, leaving the remaining 63 seats for the SP and its smaller allies.

In MP, the Congress has agreed to allot the Khajuraho seat to the SP and will field its candidates from the remaining 28 constituencies in the state.

Congress sources said that All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra played a “crucial role” in resolving the standoff between the two INDIA parties by speaking with SP national president Akhilesh Yadav over the phone to clinch the deal.

The SP-Congress seat-sharing pact would come as a shot in the arm to the beleaguered INDIA bloc which has been lurching from crisis to crisis.

“Following our discussion, it has been decided that the Congress would contest 17 seats in UP. On the remaining 63 seats, Samajwadi Party and other parties of INDIA bloc would declare their candidates to fight and defeat BJP,” AICC general secretary Avinash Pande told a joint press conference along with UP Congress chief Ajay Rai, state SP chief Naresh Uttam and SP national spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary.

While thanking AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge and Akhilesh, Pandey highlighted Priyanka’s role in forging their alliance, saying it proved to be “decisive”. “We would specially like to thank Priyanka Gandhi ji for playing a crucial role in finalising the alliance and for her efforts to bring all such forces together which can defeat BJP,” he said.

The 17 seats allotted to the Congress include