On Alliance With The Congress, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party Bowls A Googly

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party has named candidates for seven Uttar Pradesh seats that the Congress currently holds, and a senior leader of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's party said today that seat-sharing has not been finalised yet between the two parties. A formal announcement of their alliance for the UP elections was expected later today. There has so far been talk of the Samajwadi Party wanting to contest 300 of UP's 403 seats and allotting the rest to the Congress. But the party's Kiranmoy Nanda today said the Congress should ideally be given no more than 54 seats to contest.

"Other than that we can give them 30-35 seats... First let the alliance happen," he said, emphasising that, "We haven't received anything from the Congress side yet."

84 to 85 seats, Mr Nanda said, was his party's best offer to the potential ally, whose top leaders had earlier this week said that the Congress will contest the UP elections in partnership with the Samajwadi Party. Only a formal announcement was awaited.

"The Samajwadi Party's key agenda is to defeat the BJP, while the Congress wants to strengthen its position in UP," Mr Nanda said.

State Congress leaders refused to comment on the Samajwadi Party naming candidates today for the western UP seats that their party holds. The Congress had won 29 seats in the last assembly elections in UP.

There has been speculation that the Samajwadi Party could balance today's seat allotment by giving the Congress more seats to contest in the Rae Bareli and Amethi, the Lok Sabha constituencies of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son and deputy Rahul Gandhi, but Mr Nanda ruled that concession out too. The Samajwadi Party, he pointed out, holds seven out 10 assembly seats in that area, and would field winning candidates from there.

The Samajwadi Party has named 191 candidates today for constituencies where elections will be held in the first three phases of the seven-phase UP election.