Buoyed by Lok Sabha results, SP and Congress may join hands for bypolls in U.P.

Encouraged by their success in the Lok Sabha election, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress are readying to fight bypolls to 10 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh together.

“Our alliance is based on ideology and mutual trust. We emerged victorious in the Lok Sabha and were able to bring the BJP’s tally down to 33 seats in Uttar Pradesh. We won 43 seats and this partnership will continue in the bypolls. Decision on seat-sharing will be taken by the central leadership. But we are sure of defeating the BJP,” Anil Yadav, general secretary of the Uttar Pradesh Congress told The Hindu.

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Nine MLAs, including SP president Akhilesh Yadav, won Lok Sabha seats necessitating the byelection. Mr. Yadav, who had won the 2022 Assembly election from Karhal, won the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat. SP MLAs Ziaur Rehman Barq, Lalji Verma and Awadhesh Prasad will also go to the Lok Sabha vacating Kundarki, Katehari and Milkipur Assembly seats respectively. While Mr. Barq won from the Sambhal Lok Sabha seat, Lalji Verma and Awadhesh Prasad won from Ambedkar Nagar and Faizabad respectively.

Four Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs, Anoop Valmiki (MLA from Khair), Atul Garg (Ghaziabad), Praveen Patel (Phulpur) and Vinod Bind (Majhawan), were elected as Lok Sabha members. Chandan Chauhan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), MLA from Meerapur, won the Lok Sabha election from Bijnor.

The Sishamau Vidhan Sabha seat will fall vacant since its MLA Irfan Solanki from the SP is set to be disqualified after being sentenced to seven years imprisonment in an arson case.

Most of the seats that will go to the bypolls are rural where the BJP and the SP, save Meerapur where the RLD defeated the BJP, were in direct contest in the 2022 Assembly election.

The SP has hinted at contesting these seats. “Our alliance will definitely continue, there is no doubt. The SP fought most of these seats in 2022. But each worker of the alliance will collectively defeat the BJP,” said Sunil Singh Yadav ‘Sajan’, the SP national spokesperson.

The Congress may have an edge in Ghaziabad and Meerapur since its candidate Dolly Sharma polled more than five lakh votes in the Lok Sabha election.