New Delhi:

Amid the tussle with Congress on this issue, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party has released its third list of five seats for the Lok Sabha elections. One of the five candidates has been fielded from Varanasi, the seat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The other four are Kairana, Badaun, Bareilly and Hamirpur.

This takes the total number of candidates declared by the party to 32 – earlier they had announced 16 and 11 candidates in two phases.

This lopsided list comes hours after SP made its final offer of 17 seats to the Congress – more than the initial 11 seats. This increase has come after Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal became a part of NDA.

But Congress, which is demanding one or two more seats, has not responded yet.

In 2019, the Congress had contested alone in Uttar Pradesh and contested some of the state’s 80 seats. But she managed to win only one of the two – Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli. Rahul Gandhi lost his family bastion Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani.

The Samajwadi Party had argued that there was no reason to expect better results from the Congress this time. There is speculation that the situation may worsen if Sonia Gandhi leaves the Lok Sabha elections and goes to the Rajya Sabha.

Samajwadi Party has put on hold Rahul Gandhi’s decision to join the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which is currently passing through Uttar Pradesh.

For India, the crackdown in Uttar Pradesh could spell disaster. The state sends the highest number of members to the Lok Sabha, followed by Maharashtra and Bengal – two other states where seat-sharing talks are unresolved.

In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee has announced that she will contest the elections alone and will decide on her India Bloc membership only after the elections. His sharp reaction came when Congress refused to accept his offer of two seats and demanded one seat.

Talks are stalled on eight seats in Maharashtra, which include Pune and two Mumbai seats.