SP to fight on 63 UP seats, Cong on 17, including Amethi, Rae Bareli

Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) partners Samajwadi Party 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 included 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 in Lucknow by SP state chief Naresh Uttam Patel, SP national general secretary Rajendra Chaudhary, Congress state president Ajay Rai and All India Congress Committee in-charge of UP Avinash Pande.

Pande said the Congress will contest on 17 seats, while on the rest of the 63 seats in the state, the SP and other alliance partners will contest.

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 included Kanpur City, Fatehpur Sekri, Basgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Maharajganj, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki and Deoria, Patel said.

Sonia Gandhi is presently MP of Raebareli while Rahul Gandhi lost his Amethi seat to BJP leader Smriti Irani in 2019 polls.

The SP will contest on Khajuraho seat in Madhya Pradesh, which has 29 Lok Sabha seats, and support the Congress on the rest of the seats, Patel said.

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