Lucknow: Samajwadi Party (SP) and alliance partner Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on Friday sealed the deal for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls with Akhilesh Yadav setting aside seven seats for Jayant Chaudhary led party.
SP will now enter into the fourth and final phase of talks with the INDIA bloc partner – the Congress – over seat sharing in Uttar Pradesh within the next seven days.The two parties held the third round of negotiations on Wednesday where the Congress is learnt to have expressed its inclination to contest 20 seats in UP.
Akhilesh Yadav has repeatedly maintained that his party will offer a respectable number of seats to the Congress insisting that SP has never adopted a rigid approach towards seat sharing with alliance partners.
SP’s five-member committee mandated to talk to the grand old party on the issue is said to be striking a hard bargain. The committee members have decided to spare 20 seats for all its allies.
With seven seats already set aside for the RLD, the SP is now left to spare 13 more seats to accommodate the Congress.
However, sources said that any flexibility in terms of number of seats that SP wants to set aside for its allies will now be sole prerogative of party president Akhilesh Yadav.
At the same time, SP is yet to take a call about accommodating Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) – which had contested the 2022 assembly elections in alliance with SP.
“We will finalise all the issues, including the seat sharing with Congress, within the next seven days and then all the parties will get down to prepare for the elections,” said a senior SP leader privy to the developments.
Sources said now RLD has to shortlist the seats it wants to contest and the final round of talks between the two parties will be held soon to finalise the details.
“There is a broad consensus on which seats the RLD will contest and almost all are in west UP. We expect to finalise the seat sharing issue with the Congress at the earliest so that there is no clash of choice between them and the RLD,” said the SP leader.
The announcement about the SP-RLD seat sharing pact came through Akhilesh Yadav’s tweet which read: “Congratulations to everyone on the alliance of RLD and SP. Let us all unite for victory.”
Quoting his tweet, RLD president Chaudhary also tweeted: “Always ready to protect national and constitutional values. We expect all workers of our alliance to move forward together for the development and prosperity of our region.”
SP will now enter into the fourth and final phase of talks with the INDIA bloc partner – the Congress – over seat sharing in Uttar Pradesh within the next seven days.The two parties held the third round of negotiations on Wednesday where the Congress is learnt to have expressed its inclination to contest 20 seats in UP.
Akhilesh Yadav has repeatedly maintained that his party will offer a respectable number of seats to the Congress insisting that SP has never adopted a rigid approach towards seat sharing with alliance partners.
SP’s five-member committee mandated to talk to the grand old party on the issue is said to be striking a hard bargain. The committee members have decided to spare 20 seats for all its allies.
With seven seats already set aside for the RLD, the SP is now left to spare 13 more seats to accommodate the Congress.
However, sources said that any flexibility in terms of number of seats that SP wants to set aside for its allies will now be sole prerogative of party president Akhilesh Yadav.
At the same time, SP is yet to take a call about accommodating Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) – which had contested the 2022 assembly elections in alliance with SP.
“We will finalise all the issues, including the seat sharing with Congress, within the next seven days and then all the parties will get down to prepare for the elections,” said a senior SP leader privy to the developments.
Sources said now RLD has to shortlist the seats it wants to contest and the final round of talks between the two parties will be held soon to finalise the details.
“There is a broad consensus on which seats the RLD will contest and almost all are in west UP. We expect to finalise the seat sharing issue with the Congress at the earliest so that there is no clash of choice between them and the RLD,” said the SP leader.
The announcement about the SP-RLD seat sharing pact came through Akhilesh Yadav’s tweet which read: “Congratulations to everyone on the alliance of RLD and SP. Let us all unite for victory.”
Quoting his tweet, RLD president Chaudhary also tweeted: “Always ready to protect national and constitutional values. We expect all workers of our alliance to move forward together for the development and prosperity of our region.”