Congress demand for 150-200 seats in UP unreasonable: AAP's Sanjay Singh

Lucknow: Aam Aadmi Party's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh on Tuesday said the Congress's demand for 150-200 seats to contest the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in alliance with Samajwadi Party was unreasonable.

He asked the two parties to decide the seat allocation based on their electoral performances.

Referring to the Congress's performance in the previous Assembly elections, Singh said the party had secured around 2.5 per cent of votes and won just two seats.


"How many seats it should get based on that performance is something the Congress Party and Akhilesh Yadav should decide among themselves. However, the Congress demanding 150-200 seats seems unreasonable," he told PTI Videos.

"If you are asking for 200 seats after winning just two, then how many seats would you demand if you had won 111 seats, as the Samajwadi Party did? By that logic, you would demand 1,000 seats," Singh said.

Such demands would require a fresh delimitation exercise, with the Uttar Pradesh Assembly perhaps having 1,500-2,000 seats, he quipped.

Singh also cited the Congress's seat-sharing negotiations with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ahead of the Haryana Assembly elections, alleging that the discussions went through several rounds without reaching an agreement.

The Congress initially discussed allotting six seats to AAP, later reduced the offer to four and eventually to two, after which AAP leaders stopped responding to calls, he said.

The AAP subsequently contested the Haryana elections independently and secured around 2-2.5 per cent of the votes, while the Congress received less than 0.5 per cent, Singh claimed.

"If you treat your alliance partners this way, the outcome is likely to be similar to what we have seen in these states, and the BJP will benefit," he warned.

Singh urged political parties to make reasonable demands during alliance negotiations, warning that failure to accommodate alliance partners could benefit the BJP.