Even as the Election Commission is yet to take a call on which of the warring Samajwadi Party factions gets the ‘cycle’ symbol of the party, the stage seems set for an alliance between the Congress and Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.
Sources say the announcement could happen any time around January 17, the date on which the filing of nominations for the first phase of polls begins.
“We are waiting for the Election Commission’s decision, which should come by the time the filing of nominations begins. We are in the final stages of stitching an alliance with Akhilesh Yadav and the announcement could come as early as the 17th,” said a Congress leader, adding it may not matter which way the EC ruling goes.
A leader close to Mr. Yadav also confirmed to The Hindu that the alliance was almost done and an announcement could happen within days.
While there was no clarity on the seat-sharing arrangement to be put in place, sources in the Congress said the party was looking at upwards of 100 seats out of the State’s 403.
Speculation was also rife that the Akhilesh faction within the SP would part with more than 100 seats, but the Congress and Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal would have to share these as per a mutually shared formula in which the RLD would claim its share in the western districts with a sizeable presence of the Jat community.
Jat shift
The Jats, traditionally with the RLD because of the legacy of Chaudhary Charan Singh, had voted for the BJP in large numbers in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
“An alliance between the Congress and SP will strengthen both but we don’t know whether it can be a winnable combination,” said JNU academic and Uttar Pradesh observer Badri Narayan. Dr. Narayan said that an SP weakened by infighting was in the best interest of Mayawati’s BSP, as more Muslims would veer towards it to stop a resurgent BJP from coming to power in the State.
Meanwhile, Mulayam Singh and brother Shivpal Singh announced their own list for Uttarakhand.
