The matter of seat sharing within the alliance of opposition parties before the Lok Sabha elections is becoming complicated.
According to the report, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) also seems to be unhappy with the seat sharing formula presented by SP President Akhilesh Yadav regarding 80 seats of Uttar Pradesh.
The party led by Jayant Chaudhary has demanded more seats for itself. It is known that RLD has been offered 7 seats by the alliance partner Samajwadi Party.
Akhilesh had offered 11 seats to Congress. However, the final approval regarding this has not been given yet and talks are going on between the parties. Congress is demanding some more seats for itself.
According to the report of Times of India, RLD has demanded 2 more seats for itself. However, RLD has agreed that the SP candidate can contest the elections on its ticket.
This offer of RLD is reminiscent of the Kairana by-election in 2018, where SP’s Tabassum Begum had contested on its ticket. He had defeated BJP’s Mriganka Singh in this election.
During this time, BSP and Congress decided not to contest the elections, which helped in preventing vote splitting.
Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhary met
SP and RLD had announced alliance for the Lok Sabha elections a few days ago. RLD informed that it will contest elections on 7 seats in Western Uttar Pradesh.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary had announced the alliance through social media platform X.
It is known that both the parties had contested the 2022 assembly elections in alliance, in which SP had won 111 seats in the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh Assembly, while RLD had won 8 seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, RLD had an alliance with SP-BSP.
RLD had won Mathura, Baghpat and Muzaffarnagar seats, but lost all three seats, while SP and BSP won 5 and 10 seats respectively.