Divide difficult seats equally for U.P. Assembly elections, says Congress amid seat-sharing row with SP

Congress leaders have spoken out amid the ongoing dispute between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress over seat-sharing in Uttar Pradesh for the upcoming 2027 Assembly elections. The senior Congress leader, Imran Masood, working president of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, emphasized that any viable framework on seat-sharing must consider ground realities. He further stated that both the quality and quantity of seats matter in the alliance.

Masood pointed out that in the 2017 elections, the Congress was awarded 105 seats but only managed to win seven. He acknowledged that out of the approximately 100-odd seats, more than 70 were extremely challenging to win, including many urban constituencies and seats traditionally dominated by the BJP. To address this issue, he suggested dividing the difficult seats equally between the two parties, with the remaining seats distributed in a 2:1 ratio between the SP and Congress.

The Congress claims that around 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh are difficult to win, given their historical outcomes and social realities. With a total of 403 Assembly seats in the state, the disagreement over seat-sharing has intensified recently. SP Lok Sabha MP from Pratapgarh, Shivpal Singh Patel, claimed that the Congress should not anticipate more than 50 seats.

In response, Rajendra Pal Gautam, the UP Congress in-charge, dismissed Patel's statement as frivolous and questioned whether the SP is genuinely interested in forming an alliance.