The possibility of an alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress seems to be on the rocks, and the reason is believed to be disagreement over the seat-sharing formula for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. There had already been speculation that seat-sharing would cause sparks to fly between the SP, the Congress and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, and that is exactly what is happening.
Many had been of the opinion that the Congress had jumped the gun when declaring an alliance with the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP in UP. This, despite Akhilesh himself saying once that if the Congress and the SP had contested the UP elections together, they would get 300 seats out of the 404 seats in the Assembly up for grabs.
However, that seems to be a non-starter, because the SP and the Congress can't seem to be able to reach a consensus on seat-sharing for the polls. While the SP is not ready to give the Congress more than 99 seats to contest, the national party is reportedly adamant that it wants to contest at least 120 seats in the state.
SP leader Naresh Yadav confirmed as much to ANI, adding that the Congress was making demands "as if they are a very influential party in UP." It may be noted that the Congress has not been in power in the state for more than two decades now. UP happens to be an influential political state because it has sent the most number of prime ministers to office, including Narendra Modi, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Varanasi.
This difference of opinion seems to have led to a parting of ways for the two parties, although there is no official word on it yet. The UP unit president of the Congress, actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar, told ANI that there had been no halting of talks between the two political parties on forming an alliance.
Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad added that there would be concrete news on the alliance by Sunday morning.
