LUCKNOW: After the conclusion of the Lok Sabha election, Uttar Pradesh is preparing for another electoral battle with nine MLAs from the state reaching Parliament, necessitating bypoll in their respective assembly segments, setting the stage for another round of a bipolar NDA vs INDIA bloc contest in the state.
Buoyed by their performance in the recent polls, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) have hinted at continuing their alliance in the upcoming bypolls to nine assembly seats, of which four each have been vacated by the BJP and SP MLAs and one by the RLD MLA.
Though none of the two opposition partners have come out clearly on the seat-sharing as the Congress has no stakes in the bypoll, UPCC chief Ajai Rai confirmed that the tie-up would continue and that there could be seat-sharing discussions as well.
Notably, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has quit Karhal assembly seat to retain the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat. The other seats that have fallen vacant as the sitting MLAs have been elected to Lok Sabha include Anoop Valmiki from Khair (Aligarh), Praveen Patel from Phulpur (Prayagraj), Atul Garg from Ghaziabad (Ghaziabad), Dr Vinod Bind from Majhawan (Mirzapur) of BJP. Similarly, besides Akhilesh Yadav from Karnal, other SP MLAs include Ziaur Rehman Barq from Kundarki (Moradabad), Lalji Verma from Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar), and Awadhesh Prasad from Milkipur (Faizabad).
Meanwhile, Chandan Chauhan of RLD from Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar) assembly seat has also vacated it as he has won from Bijnor Lok Sabha seat. While the Congress had not won any of these nine seats in 2022 UP assembly polls, it had contested Ghaziabad and Khair seats unsuccessfully under the SP-Cong pre-poll pact in 2017 assembly polls.
In 2024 LS polls also, the SP gave Ghaziabad Lok Sabha seat to the Congress but it lost. As per a Congress source, the party may seek at least Khair and Ghaziabad seats from SP owing to its harmonious equation with the ally SP.
On the other hand, SP leadership also confirmed that the allies may have seat sharing discussions for the bypolls. At present SP has 107 MLAs in theAssembly and the ruling BJP has 252.
