Sikandara bypoll: Samajwadi Party, Congress field separate candidates

NEW DELHI: The Congress and the Samajwadi Party have fielded separate candidates for the first bypoll being held in Uttar Pradesh since the assembly election in the state earlier this year that the two parties had contested in an alliance, spelling an end to the partnership that SP chief Akhilesh Yadav repeatedly said would continue.

The bypoll for the Sikandara seat in Kanpur, to be held on December 21, was necessitated after the incumbent BJP MLA Mathura Prasad Pal passed away.

"Right now, we are not in any alliance. The one with Congress got over with the UP Assembly polls. We will also contest the upcoming Lok Sabha bypolls in Phulpur and Gorakhpur separately," Sunil Singh Yadav, SP spokesman and a close aide of Akhilesh Yadav, told ET.

"If there has to be an alliance with the Congress for 2019 Lok Sabha polls, it will have to be a fresh one," Yadav said. The UP Congress spokesman, Akhilesh Pratap Singh, expressed similar opinion.

"The alliance was only till UP assembly polls. Now, we are free. We are doing our own preparations for the upcoming by-polls," Singh told ET. The SP-Congress alliance had fared miserably in the state polls that the BJP won by a landslide