Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh are likely to announce the seats for their smaller ally Rashtriya Lok Dal on Tuesday. The three seats are expected to be announced in a joint press conference by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and RLD vice-president Jayant Chaudhary in Lucknow.
It is being speculated that the three seats the RLD has clinched in the agreement are from Mathura, Baghpat and Muzaffarnagar constituencies. According to the seat-sharing announcement made on February 22, the SP conceded one seat to accommodate the RLD, which had been pressing for a minimum of three seats despite deciding on an equal partnership earlier.
The BSP will now contest from 38 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, while the SP will contest from 37. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Mathura was won by the BJP while BSP was a runner-up with RLD following in the third position. Chaudhary had contested from Mathura seat. The BJP had also managed to clinch a victory in Baghpat, where RLD chief Ajit Singh had contested. RLD was a runner up and BSP stayed at number three. The Muzaffarnagar seat was also won by the BJP with BSP and SP managing the second and third positions.
The SP-BSP alliance had also announced that it will not contest on two seats of Amethi and Raebareli, though it did not mention any kind of understanding with the Congress. There was speculation that Priyanka Gandhi's entry into the political arena had prompted the SP and BSP camps to rethink but Mayawati's repeated attacks on the Congress in the last one month have poured cold water over the rumours.
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