NEW DELHI: The Congress-SP relationship is going steadily downhill.
After months of protracted seat-sharing negotiations, the two parties are nowhere near reaching an agreement on the number of seats each will contest.
The Sonia Gandhi-Mulayam Singh Yadav meeting at Lucknow airport a fortnight ago had revived hopes of an early breakthrough, but little progress appears to have been made. In fact, the distance between the two sides is steadily growing.
The two parties remain adamant in their assessment of their strengths and they have now begun talking of the possibility of both sides going it alone.
The bone of contention between the two sides is that the Congress has given the SP a list of 31 seats on which it wants to contest in UP. Interestingly, 10 of the 31 seats are currently held by the SP, which is obviously is not inclined to relinquish its hold on these seats. "They are laying claims to seats which are either held by us or where they have not done well in the last three elections" says SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Though the Congress does concede the point that the SP is the stronger force in UP, it believes that historically UP has been its bastion and given the delimitation of constituencies the ground realities have changed in its favor.
"Ask even a blind person in UP and he will tell you is that the only force capable of defeating the BSP and the BJP is SP and nobody else," says SP general secretary Amar Singh.
The frustration in the SP ranks over what it terms "Congress partys unreasonableness" is beginning to show. "We helped bail out the UPA government at the time of the trust vote. We did not press for our people to be rewarded with ministerial berths. We have always been supportive of the UPA despite their obvious shortcomings, but that should not be taken as some kind of capitulation. We are capable of fighting elections on our own, says a senior SP leader.
The Congress meanwhile has chosen to keep its powder dry. "We appreciate the SPs help. We are not being unreasonable at all. The ground realities in UP have undergone a change and what we have asked for reflects that," says UPCC chief Rita Bahuguna.
