If Congress Behaves Like This, Who Will Stand With Them: Akhilesh Yadav On MP Poll Row

Upset with the Congress over the failure to reach a seat-sharing agreement in the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav deprecated his INDIA bloc ally again on Friday, saying "if the Congress behaves like this, who will stand with them".

"I am not giving any advice or suggestions to the Congress party but there is a big challenge before the nation. The BJP is a big party. It is a very organised side. So there should be no confusion regarding it in any party. If you fight with confusion you will not win any election," PTI quoted the Samajwadi Party chief as saying.

He said, "If the Congress behaves like this, who will stand with them."

A day ago, Yadav had expressed his unhappiness over the Congress not allocating any seat to the SP despite talks on seat sharing in MP and suggested that the grand old party could get the same treatment from his party in Uttar Pradesh.

The SP chief had said his party leaders wouldn't have answered calls from the Congress for a meeting in Madhya Pradesh had he known that the INDIA alliance was confined to the national level.

"I must have got confused," he had told reporters.

In response, UPCC president Ajay Rai retorted on Friday, emphasizing that Yadav could not hold the Congress responsible since the SP had announced its list of candidates ahead of his party, ultimately aiding the BJP by running independently. Nonetheless, the SP president reiterated that the INDIA alliance should have made it clear that there would be no alliance in the state elections.

He said that the "PDA (Backward, Dalit and Alpsankhyak) was formed before INDIA. On various occasions, I have said that there is an INDIA alliance but our strategy is PDA and PDA will defeat NDA." "When a leader of the MP and a former chief minister spoke to us and asked about the seats we wanted in MP, I shared the performance of SP in various elections in MP and told him that many people were elected from MP who joined other parties.

"I reminded that when Congress needed support, SP MLA was the first to offer support and government was formed," he said. "We are against the BJP and we offered our support to defeat BJP. In the meeting that continued till 1 am in the night, they assured us to give six seats. But, when they declared candidates on all seats, in compulsion, the SP has to declare candidates from where we are strong," he said.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) announced its third list of two candidates on Thursday night. With this, it has announced 33 candidates for the November 17 polls to the 230-member assembly in the BJP-ruled state.

The Congress has already announced its candidates for 229 seats and willing to give six seats for the SP, but the talks did not materialise. "I believe that if you were not ready to give any seat you should have not talked to us. But, they didn't give any information to us. So, SP is fighting where we have our presence," said Yadav.

"The emotions that Samajwadis have with Azamgarh it is possible Congress has the same emotions in Raebareli and Amethi. We have never commented on Raebareli and Amethi," the SP chief said without elaborating.

In the 2018 Madhya Pradesh elections, the SP won one seat (Bijawar in Bundelkhand region) and finished second on five, securing 1.30 per cent votes in alliance with the tribal Gondwana Gantantra Party.

Madhya Pradesh will have single-phase polling on November 17 with the counting of votes set for December 3 along with other states.