Tough UP test may have begun for INDIA bloc as Akhilesh offers Rahul Gandhi a difficult choice

Akhilesh Yadav, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief, said on February 19 that he and his party will join Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra only on one condition. Samajwadi Party will not take part in the yatra before seat-sharing with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh is finalised, he said.

The Samajwadi Party and the Congress are allies in the opposition INDIA bloc. At this point, it remains unclear if any headway has been made in the seat-sharing parleys.

Rahul Gandhi's yatra was set to pass through Amethi on February 19. After that, it will enter Raebareli. Yadav had earlier said that he would join the yatra when it reached Raebareli.


The Samajwadi Party had originally offered 11 seats to the Congress. The Congress, however, had sought some more.

The party's Uttar Pradesh chief, Ajay Rai, had said on an earlier occasion that it should get around two dozen seats that it had won in the 2009 general elections.

According to Samajwadi Party sources cited by news agency PTI, the offer to the Congress has since been scaled up to 15 seats. They say that the Congress would need to agree to this offer for Yadav to join Gandhi's procession at Raebareli on February 20.

Uttar Pradesh is usually at the front and centre of every political party's electoral calculations prior to any national election. The state, India's most populous, sends as many as 80 MPs -- the highest among all states -- to Parliament.

It may be recalled that the Congress had won only one seat -- Raebareli -- in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 general elections. Rahul Gandhi had lost Congress pocket borough Amethi to Smriti Irani. In the 2019 elections, the SP had not contested from Raebareli and Amethi as a courtesy gesture to the grand old party.