Congress, Samajwadi Party at loggerheads in Madhya Pradesh

In fact, the Sonia Gandhi-led party has accommodated as many as three rebel Samajwadi Party members of the Legislative Assembly among its candidates for the assembly polls scheduled for later this month, according to sources in the Madhya Pradesh Congress.

This is in spite of the fact that Amar Singh had accused the Congress of splitting his party and wanted the All India Congress Committee to refrain from nominating the rebel MLAs.

Besides, the SP was looking for a tie-up in Madhya Pradesh with the Congress but the AICC turned a deaf ear forcing Singh to declare that his party would go it alone in the polls in MP, the sources said.

All the rebel SP MLAs were former Congressmen and were forced to join SP following denial of tickets ahead of the 2003 assembly polls.

In its list of party candidates for all the 230 seats in the state, Congress has given tickets to these three SP MLAs - K K Singh, Vikram Singh and Vanshmani Verma - who had joined the party in September this year.

K K Singh, is the nephew of veteran Congress leader and former chief minister of the state Arjun Singh, has been given a ticket from Sidhi. Singh represented Gopadbanas in the 2003 assembly elections, a seat which now does not exist post-delimitation.    

Vikram Singh, also known as 'Nati Raja', would be contesting on a Congress ticket from Rajnagar, which is a new seat. He represented Chhatarpur in the previous polls, from where Congress has named Santosh Aggarwal as its candidate.