Lucknow: After days of negotiation and playing hard ball, the Samajwadi Party and Congress forged an alliance for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. A formal announcement of the alliance was made here tonight by both the parties.Both the parties will release their separate poll manifesto but a joint agenda or minimum-common programme would be released within a week which will give details of the working pattern of the alliance. SP president and Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will be the leader of the coalition. Out of them total 403 assembly seats in UP, SP will contest 298 seats while the rest 105 will go to the Congress.
The state presidents of the SP and the Congress announced the pre poll alliance in a joint press conference here. State president of the Samajwadi Party Naresh Uttam said that the aim and objective of the alliance is to place Uttar Pradesh as frontline developed state and make Mr Akhilesh Yadav, the chief minister of the state for the second consecutive term. " The coming together of the SP and the Congress is not merely an electoral alliance but we seek to usher in a new era of development and social justice in UP by dislodging the caste and communal forces led by the Bahujan Samaj Party and Bharatiya Janata Party’’, said Naresh Uttam. Issuing an appeal to the people of the state, Mr Uttam said the SP seeks the blessings of the people for the alliance so that UP can be freed from the vicious grip of the caste and communal forces.
State Congress president Raj Babbar said, 'Considering the prevailing atmosphere in UP and in deference of the wishes of the people, intellectuals and the people ideologically close to the Congress and for the development of UP, Congress has taken a historic decision of entering into an alliance with the Samajwadi party.' "SP and Congress have forged pre-poll alliance and with the combined strength of both the parties, we will stop the forces pursuing the divisive agenda by creating polarisation of the voters on communal lines’’, said Raj Babbar, adding that 'both the parties will strengthen the secular forces in UP.' 'The alliance rests on the solid foundation of the positive works done by the Akhilesh Yadav government during the last five years.
This alliance under the young leadership of Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav will seek the mandate of the people irrespective of caste and religion', said Mr Babbar. Assuring the youth that SP-Congress alliance will work for their empowerment, Raj Babbar said, 'If the alliance is voted to power then we will present an agenda of governance in UP which will seek to provide a government with transparency and accountability.' Raj Babbar parried questions over the '27 saal se UP Behaal' yatra taken out by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in September last year.
The yatra had specifically targeted the misrule of Akhilesh Yadav government and had accused the SP of ignoring the interests of the farmers. Lashing out at the demonetisation of the high value currency notes, Raj Babbar said, 'Ban on high values currency notes only benefitted the rich and the industrialist while ruined the poor and the farmers'. He said the SP-Congress alliance will ensure justice to the farmers and the working class. The announcement of the pre poll alliance was preceded by utter chaos as the dispute arose on the place of the joint press conference for announcing the alliance.
Earlier, it was announced that the joint press conference will be held at the state office of the Samajwadi Party. Mr Babbar refused to visit the SP office for the press conference scheduled to be held at 1730 hrs. Later, the state SP president announced that the venue of the press conference has been shifted to a hotel. The deal was finally struck after hectic negotiations that reportedly went on till about 0430 hrs today in New Delhi. The Samajwadi Party at last agreed to allot 105 of UP's 403 seats to the Congress to contest as its junior partner, up from the 99 offered yesterday. However, the first information about deal was disclosed by Congress leader Ahmed Patel through his tweeter post this morning. "Wrong to suggest lightweights were dealing on behalf of Congress party. Discussion was at highest level- b/w CM (UP),GS I/C & Priyanka Gandhi," tweeted Patel.
Ms Priyanka Vadra was closely involved, reportedly holding detailed discussions with both Akhilesh Yadav and his wife Dimple. But when talks broke down yesterday, with both sides refusing to yield any more ground, Ms Sonia Gandhi had to reportedly step in to salvage the alliance. Ms Gandhi's intervention is however stoutly being denied by Congress leaders so that Ms Vadra's role is not undermined. Late last night, Ahmed Patel, who is a close aide of the Congress chief, is said to have worked on phones on her behalf, tweeted that he had not called any Samajwadi Party leader. The Congress has considerably scaled down its demand from the 138 seats that it had asked to contest as negotiations began.
It was not known yet whether the Samajwadi Party has thrown in seats for the Congress in Rae Bareli and Amethi, the parliamentary constituencies of Sonia Gandhi and her son and deputy Rahul Gandhi, as part of the new deal, a major prestige point for the Congress. There are 10 assembly seats in Rae Bareli and Amethi, seven of which were won by the Samajwadi Party in the last assembly election and two by the Congress. Till yesterday, the Samajwadi Party was clear it would not allot the seats it had won to the Congress just because of the alliance Both the Congress and the SP arrived at a consensus following numerous rounds of discussion in the past few weeks.
While the Congress was looking to take smaller allies like the Rashtriya Lok Dal on board, the Samajwadi Party only wanted an alliance with the Congress. Talks between the two parties appeared to hit a wall yesterday over seat-sharing, which led Congress president Sonia Gandhi to intervene and reach out to Akhilesh Yadav. While the Samajwadi Party had offered 99 seats, the Congress continued to bargain for more seats. Akhilesh Yadav was reluctant to part with more since seats as his party wanted to contest 300 seats on its own. Meanwhile, SP just after announcing the alliance, announced the third list of 77 candidates for the remaining phases of the elections. Now the party has announced names of 284 candidates for the UP polls out of their total allotted 298. (UNI)