Sonia’s daughter sets up alliance deal with Akhilesh’s wife Dimple under which Congress will field candidates for 80 to 90 seats and let other alliance partners get the seats from its share.
New Delhi : Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, hence it came as a big surprise to the Congress leaders engaged in managing the Uttar Pradesh elections when he broke the news of Priyanka”s deal for the alliance two days ago and asked them to quickly identify the seats to be sought in the bargain.
Sources said Azad has already met Ramgopal thrice and both were meeting here on Saturday at a secret place to give a final shape to the deal. They said he would be negotiating for some 150 seats, leaving 253 seats for the Akhilesh party. In the last 2012 elections, the Samajwadi Party had won 226 seats while the Congress now has just 20 MLAs in the present House since after eight, including former state Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi, defecting to other parties.
Those in the Ramgopal camp, however, said Akhilesh group may yield 110 to 120 seats to the Congress and that too on the condition that the Congress will give seats from its quota to the Rashtriya Lok Dal of former PM Charan Singh”s son Ajit Singh, as also to Peace Party, breakaway Apana Dal of Krishna Patel, Janata Dal(U), Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The idea is to project it as a “Grand Alliance” alike one formed during the Bihar Assembly elections to defeat the BJP.
The formula worked out by Priyanka and Dimple envisages that the Congress will field candidates for 80 to 90 seats and let other alliance partners get the seats from the Congress share.
Rahul was initially reluctant for any alliance, but he sobered up after being told by the UP leaders invited to Delhi for a discussion on the campaign so far that the Congress would not cut much ice on its own and a 4-cornered fight would rather benefit the BJP. Sources said it was, however, after Priyanka came into the picture that he gave a green signal for the alliance. She shot down his idea to take advantage of the infighting in the Samajwadi Party to demand at least 200 seats, pointing out that the Congress may not have that many winnable candidates.
The Congress had formally completed the exercise of selecting panel of two to five candidates for all 403 Assembly seats, except for the 20 seats of the sitting MLAs. The party leaders involved in the poll preparations sat together to shortlist from them about 200 seats where the Congress can win. The list was further reduced to 150 before Rahul asked Azad to negotiate with Ramgopal and finalise the deal.
Meanwhile, Sonia Gandhi on Saturday constituted a 3-member screening committee headed by former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to decide the Congress candidates in Uttar Pradesh. Two other members are staunch Rahul supporters – AICC secretary Deepak Ratilal Babaria (59) from Gujarat who operates from his office and Assam MP Sushmita Dev (44).
The screening committee will shortlist the candidates as soon as it gets the list of the seats on which the Congress has to contest and it will be only a formality for the Central Election Committee to ditto its recommendations except in case of differences in one or two seats, the party sources added.
