Akhilesh-Rahul Meeting In Srinagar Mends INDI Alliance For UP By-Polls, But Congress Unlikely To Get More Than Two Seats

The INDI Alliance, which appeared to have taken a backseat in Uttar Pradesh after Samajwadi Party (SP) unilaterally declared six candidates for assembly by-polls, appears to be coming back together.

This comes after SP national president Akhilesh Yadav and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met in Srinagar on Wednesday (16 October), where they were present to attend the oath ceremony of Omar Abdullah.

It is believed that discussions took place between them regarding the seat-sharing arrangement for the by-polls announced for nine assembly seats and the SP has agreed to let Congress contest the Ghaziabad seat.

Earlier, Congress was eyeing to contest five of the 10 vacant seats. But the SP announced candidates for Phulpur and Majhawan in the Mirzapur district, where Congress wanted to contest.

Then Ghaziabad, Khair in Aligarh district and Meerapur in Muzaffarnagar district seats were left for Congress to claim. However, the SP has agreed only for the Ghaziabad seat and kept the Khair seat under consideration.

The final decision on Khair is likely to be taken in the next couple of days. The SP has denied the Meerapur seat to Congress as the latter could get only 0.58 per cent votes there in 2022.

The SP contested the 2022 assembly elections in alliance with Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). RLD won in Meerapur. In 2017, the SP lost this seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by a narrow margin of less than 200 votes.

Thus, SP finds it in a better position in Meerapur. On the contrary, the SP has won in Ghaziabad only once, that too in 2004 by-polls, and hence, finding its position weak, it gave the seat to the Congress.

Khair has become a bone of contention because both SP and Congress are weak in this seat. In 2007, 2012 and 2017, the SP got less than 8,000 votes here. In 2022, it gave RLD to contest this seat, which came third.

The Congress' performance is worse. It got only 1,500 votes here in 2022. In 2017, Congress contested in alliance with RLD and gave this seat to RLD, which came third.

While it remains to be seen who gets the Khair seat to contest, the SP has already started targeting the ruling BJP as by-polls were announced only for nine seats, leaving Ayodhya's Milkipur.

SP had announced Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad's son Ajit Prasad as the Milkipur candidate. However, the by-polls were not announced for the seat because of a pending court case against Awadhesh Prasad.

The other candidates announced by SP include wives of former MLAs, as Naseem Solanki has been fielded in Kanpur's Sisamau and Shobhavati Verma has been fielded in Katehari in Ambedkar Nagar district.

As Akhilesh Yadav vacated the Karhal seat in his home district Mainpuri on being elected as Lok Sabha MP from Kannauj, his nephew Tej Pratap Yadav has been fielded there.

In Majhawan, the daughter of former MP Ramesh Bind, Dr Jyoti Bind, has been fielded. Ramesh had lost the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Mirzapur on the SP ticket.

The SP has declared former MLA Mustafa Siddiqui as the candidate from Phulpur. He had lost here in 2022 by a narrow margin of 2,700 votes.

The BJP and Congress are yet to declare candidates. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has declared candidates for many seats including Shivbaran Pasi in Phulpur, Amit Verma in Katehari and Deepu Tiwari in Majhawan.