Lok Sabha polls: INDIA allies SP, Congress to tie-up in UP, MP

INDIA bloc partners SP and Congress on Wednesday announced a tie-up for the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, with UP's main opposition party leaving 17 out of the 80 seats in the state for the ally.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party will contest on a single seat, Khajuraho, and support the Congress in the remaining constituencies in the state.

Among the 17 seats on which the Congress will contest in UP are Raebareli and Amethi, once considered pocket boroughs of the party, and Varanasi, which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency.

The seat-sharing announcement was made at a joint press conference here by SP state chief Naresh Uttam Patel, SP national general secretary Rajendra Chaudhary, state Congress president Ajay Rai and AICC in-charge of UP Avinash Pande.

Pande said the Congress will contest on 17 seats, leaving the remaining 63 seats in the state to the SP and other alliance partners.

SP state president Patel said, "The Congress will contest on 17 seats in UP and on the rest of the 63 seats, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will decide candidates."

Apart from Raebareli, Amethi and Varanasi, the other seats on which the Congress will be contesting include Kanpur City, Fatehpur Sikri, Basgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj (Allahabad), Maharajganj, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria, Patel said.

Sonia Gandhi is the sitting MP from Raebareli, while Rahul Gandhi lost his Amethi seat to BJP leader and Union minister Smriti Irani in the 2019 polls.

In Madhya Pradesh, the SP will contest the Khajuraho seat out of the state's total of 29 Lok Sabha seats, and support the Congress on the rest, Patel said.

He said senior leaders of both the parties will chalk out future programmes of the alliance.