Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Akhilesh Yadav will join Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Agra on February 25, party leader Rajendra Chowdhury said on Thursday. The development comes as Congress and SP cracked the seat-sharing arrangement for Lok Sabha elections 2024 as per which the grand old party will contest 17 seats in Uttar Pradesh and leave the rest 63 for SP and other smaller parties in the INDIA bloc.
Earlier, Akhilesh Yadav had cleared that he would only join the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra if the parties agreed to a seat-sharing arrangement.
Apart from its two bastions- Raebareli and Amethi, the SP will support Congress candidates in Varanasi, Kanpur Nagar, Fatehpur Sikri, Basgaon, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Maharajganj, Amroha, Jhansi, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Mathura, Sitapur, Barabanki, and Deoria.
The seat-sharing arrangement also covers Madhya Pradesh where Congress has left the Khajuraho seat for SP. “Under the agreement between the two parties, the SP will contest one seat on its symbol in MP--the Khajuraho seat. On the rest of the MP seats, the SP will support the Congress candidates. Likewise, the Congress will contest 17 seats (in UP) and the SP will work towards making the Congress win the 17 seats,” SP state unit chief Naresh Uttam Patel said.
“The BJP came to power in 2014 through UP. Now, in 2024, it will exit through UP with SP, Congress, and INDIA bloc ousting the BJP from UP,” SP’s Rajendra Chaudhary said.
The map of Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra underwent some more changes and the Congress MP is scheduled to travel to some areas of Western Uttar Pradesh. Earlier, the Congress decided to skip the region in the backdrop of alliance talks between Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra will now traverse through Moradabad, Sambhal, Aligarh, Hathras, and Agra region of Western UP.
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