In Uttar Pradesh seat pact, SP to bear larger burden against BJP urban might

All the seats where the Congress came second were won by the BJP, with the BSP coming third.

The BJP is considered strongest in urban seats, and had won each in Uttar Pradesh with huge margins in the 2014 elections.

Declaring their alliance, the SP and BSP had said they would contest 38 Lok Sabha seats each, leaving the two Congress bastions of Amethi and Rae Bareli and the remaining two seats for potential allies, most likely the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). “The distribution of seats is being done based on past performances of both the parties and the social equations of areas concerned,” said an SP leader.

Samajwadi Party National President Akhilesh Yadav with Bahujan Samaj Party Supreemo Mayawati.

Sources also said that should the RLD join the alliance, it might get three seats — apart from the two the SP, BSP have set aside, an additional one (Mathura) from the SP quota.

Sources said a formal announcement of the seat details may be made after the ongoing Parliament session.

Among the urban constituencies, the SP is likely to get Moradabad, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, Allahabad, Gorakhpur and Varanasi. The SP, with BSP support, had defeated the BJP in Gorakhpur in a Lok Sabha bypoll last year, laying the foundation for their alliance.

In 2014, of these seats, the SP had been runner-up in Moradabad, Jhansi, Gorakhpur and Allahabad. In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi, the Aam Aadmi Party was the runner-up while the SP and BSP had got less than one lakh votes.

Bahujan Samaj Party Supreemo Mayawati along with Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav hold a joint press conference at Hotel Taj in Lucknow on saturday.Express photo by Vishal Srivastav

“There is a possibility that the Opposition may field a joint candidate against the BJP in Varanasi this time, but it will be the SP that will fight if the SP-BSP contests separate from other parties,” said an SP leader.

The six urban seats expected to fall in the BSP kitty are Meerut, Saharanpur, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Aligarh, Agra and Bareilly. In these seats, the BSP was the runner-up in Meerut, Aligarh and Agra in 2014, while the SP had finished second in Gautam Buddha Nagar and Bareilly. But in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the BSP had won Gautam Buddha Nagar and got double the SP’s votes in Bareilly.

What also gives the alliance hope is that in the 2017 local body elections, the BSP won the mayor seats in Aligarh and Meerut, defeating the BJP. Muslim votes going to the SP from the BSP was seen to have helped the BJP.

Of the six Lok Sabha seats where the Congress stood second in 2014, where the SP and BSP are also said to have reached an understanding, the initial agreement is for the BSP to contest Saharanpur, Barabanki and Kushinagar, and the SP Ghaziabad, Lucknow and Kanpur. Ghaziabad, Lucknow and Kanpur are urban seats.

Claiming that the SP had prevailed on the BSP to bring the RLD in, the SP leader said the party considers the seats that go to the RLD as its own. “Hence, while the SP on paper will contest only on 37 seats, it is going to have 40 seats in total, including the seats of the RLD,” an SP leader said.