Akhilesh Yadav task cut out after Uttar Pradesh pact

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) finalised their seat sharing for the upcoming Lok Sabha (LS) elections on Thursday. Of the 80 LS seats in Uttar Pradesh, BSP will contest 38 and SP 37. Three seats have been set aside for Rashtriya Lok Dal of Ajit Singh, while Amethi and Rae Bareli, pocket boroughs of the Gandhi family, have been spared.

A statement signed by BSP chief Mayawati and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav released the full list of seat allocation. As per the statement, SP will fight from Kairana, Ghaziabad, Mainpuri, Etah, Pilibhit, Lucknow, Etawah, Kannauj, Jhansi, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Azamgarh and Varanasi among others.

Some of the seats the BSP will fight from are Sahranpur, Meerut, Aligarh, Sultanpur, Shrawasti, Ghazipur, Jaunpur and Pratapgarh among others.

The allocation shows while SP will be mainly fighting seats from central and northwestern UP, BSP battlefield will be western and eastern UP.

An analysis of the incumbents on these seats also shows the SP has its task cut out as it will have to wrest back high-profile seats where the incumbents range from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Lucknow. Other heavyweights against whom SP might be up against, provided they contest again, include Ministers Uma Bharti in Jhansi, VK Singh in Ghaziabad and Women and Maneka Gandhi in Pilibhit.

SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav was not amused over the declaration of seat sharing and lamented the allocation of 50% of seats to BSP in the alliance. "It was I who bagged 42 seats when I went on to become the defence minister of the country. But today, we are contesting only on half the seats. It is my son who has forged this alliance. Had it been me, things would have been different," Yadav said.