Will Congress get what it wants in Amethi, Rae Bareli?

NEW DELHI: Congress and Samajwadi Party are still deadlocked over sharing of seats in the Gandhi family borough, with the former pushing for a lion's share as well as the freedom to pick the constituencies of its choice.

Two days after the pact was sealed, sources said SP has not yet withdrawn the five candidates it announced in Rae Bareli and Amethi. Congress wants to contest 7-8 seats out of the 10 on the parliamentary turf of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. While Congress is confident that SP will withdraw some of its candidates, what is rankling the party is the fact that Akhilesh Yadav presented it with a fait accompli on the choice of seats. If SP retains any of its five candidates, Congress would have to take whatever seat it vacates.

Instead, Congress sources said the party wants a freedom to pick the constituency based on winnability. "Ideally, in Rae Bareli and Amethi, we should decide which seats we want to contest and which we don't want to," a party leader said.

Senior leaders say distribution of seats without assessing the winnability of each party would hand an advantage to rival BSP.

"Like, SP has given ticket to its sitting MLA in Sareni (Rae Bareli). After a local incident of murder, the Yadav community has turned against him. Our assessment says the community will vote for BSP if the MLA is repeated. But if Congress gets the seat, we will win with SP support," said a Congress manager.

"If SP gives weak seats to Congress and is weak on the seats it contests, we both will suffer despite the alliance," he added. Sources said SP holds seven of the 10 seats on Gandhi turf and has to drop sitting MLAs in favour of Congress.

Congress, it is learnt, has decided to leave four sitting seats for SP in the first two phase of elections, like Lucknow Cantonment and Suar in Rampur. As of now, SP has ceded only two seats in Amethi which are anyway held by Congress and given three in Rae Bareli where Congress does not have an MLA.

However, sources said the allies are soft-pedalling the issue as Amethi and Rae Bareli go to polls in the 4th and 5th phase, with managers preferring to tend to more urgent issues relating to pockets which vote earlier.