Samajwadi Party waits for INDIA bloc meet to take call on pact with Congress in Madhya Pradesh

The Samajwadi Party is looking at the first coordination committee meeting of the INDIA alliance scheduled to take place in Delhi on September 13 for clarity to emerge on whether the SP and the Congress will also be allying with each other for the Madhya Pradesh assembly election for which the SP has announced seven candidates so far.

The SP has announced candidates for Nivari, Rajnagar, Bhander, Mehgaon, Dhauhani, Chitrangi and Sirmaur which mostly fall in the Bundelkhand and Gwalior-Chambal regions of the state which border Uttar Pradesh. In MP, the election is largely expected to be a BJP versus Congress contest.

A senior SP leader said there have not been any talks on whether the SP and Congress will also contest the MP state assembly election together but in the Delhi meeting clarity should emerge on the issue. Another senior leader said the SP is "open" ally with the Congress in MP. In the 2018 and 2008 MP elections, the SP had won one seat each. Its best performance in the state was in 2003 when it won seven seats, its best electoral performance outside of UP till date.


In the recent assembly bypoll in Ghosi, the Congress did not field a candidate and extend its support to the SP candidate Sudhakar Singh, who won.

On Friday, the Aam Aadmi Party announced ten candidates each for Chhattisgarh and MP elections.

Last year, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had urged workers on his appointment as the party national president again for the next five years to aim at attaining a "national status" for the party, and the MP elections will help it get closer to that aim.