Congress-SP seat-sharing deal in Madhya Pradesh too, Akhilesh Yadav’s party to contest just one of 29 seats

After Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress seem to have sealed the seat-sharing deal in Madhya Pradesh too. “The Samajwadi Party will contest one seat, Khajuraho, in Madhya Pradesh and support Congress on the rest,” the chief of Uttar Pradesh's SP unit, Naresh Uttam Patel was quoted by PTI as saying on Wednesday. 

There are a total of 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh. Patel said senior leaders of both the parties will chalk out future programmes of the alliance.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is currently in power in Madhya Pradesh. In the 2023 assembly polls, the BJP secured a landslide victory against the Congress by winning 163 of the total 230 assembly seats. Meanwhile, the Congress won 66 seats. The Bharat Adivasi Party opened its tally for the first time in Madhya Pradesh by winning the Sailana seat.

The Madhya Pradesh seat-sharing deal was announced soon after INDIA bloc partners SP and Congress announced a tie-up for the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh. In Uttar Pradesh, the SP decided to contest on 63 seats, leaving 17 out of the 80 seats in the state for the ally Congress.

Among the 17 seats on which the Congress will contest in UP include Raebareli and Amethi, once considered pocket boroughs of the party, and Varanasi which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency.

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," SP state chief Naresh Uttam Patel was quoted by PTI as saying.

The Samajwadi Party and the Congress are partners in the INDIA bloc. The success of the seat sharing talks between the two are crucial, especially after the failure of such talks with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has decided to contest in her state alone.