- Congress sets 150-seat minimum for UP assembly elections.
- Seat-sharing talks with Samajwadi Party to finalize in October.
- Congress seeks 50% of alliance seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Ahead of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress has set a boundary for seat negotiations with the Samajwadi Party, saying it won't contest fewer than 150 seats.
Speaking to news agency ANI, Congress UP in-charge Rajendra Pal Gautam on Monday said that seat-sharing talks with the Samajwadi Party are likely to be finalised in October. He said that Congress is entitled to contest half of the seats in alliance with SP. 50 per cent of the seats make 202 seats.
With a 50 per cent claim, Gautam hinted that Congress is looking for an equal share of seats to contest the polls; however, he added that the party would not settle for fewer than 150 seats.
"Seat-sharing will likely be finalised in October. Congress has candidates available to contest all 403 seats. Under the alliance, the Congress is entitled to 50% of the seats. We will not contest fewer than 150 seats," he said.
He informed that the top brass of the Congress has been working on seat-sharing for the past two months. "For the last two months, Congress has been working on seat-sharing in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Priyanka Gandhi, KC Venugopal and I are looking after this work," Gautam added.
Several reports in the past couple of months have stated that the two Opposition parties have reached a consensus on posing a unified struggle in a bid to uproot the CM Yogi Adityanath-led government.
In the 2024 general elections, the two parties had contested in an alliance and won 43 out of 80 seats. The Samajwadi Party had won 37 seats while Congress won 6. The BJP, which had won 72 seats in 2014 and 62 in 2019, was restricted to 33 seats in 2024.