New Delhi: Samajwadi Party stepped up pressure on the Congress for expediting a seat-sharing arrangement in Uttar Pradesh, announcing candidates for 17 more seats in the state and blaming the grand old party of giving it "raw deal".

"We have had three coordination committee meetings with Congress, and ever since we have started supporting them, some middle level Congress leaders have repeatedly been insulting us. This kind of behaviour on the part of Congress is against coalition dharma," SP general secretary Amar Singh said here while releasing the party's second list of 17 MPs for LS seats in UP.

Having released a list of 29 candidates earlier this week, the total number of nominees announced by the party for the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state so far is 46.

While maintaining that Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh favour coordination with SP, Singh said that those assigned to execute this are not playing a proper role.

"I was called mad, Samajwadi Party was called unreliable and it was said our leader Mulayam Singh should learn politics from Lalu Prasad (by some Congress leaders)... This after we gave them vital support during the confidence vote," Singh said.

The SP leader said, "There are 80 seats in UP and we have only released 46 of them. We have enough seats for Congress. We have named only those seats which Congress had not sought from us. We will take a decision on the seats being claimed by Congress at a later stage".

Asked about SP's announcement to field Sanjay Dutt from Lucknow even when it is a "claimed" seat by Congress, Amar Singh said, "There can be no better candidate than Sanjay Dutt for Lucknow. Even their (Congress) MP Priya Dutt has welcomed Sanjay Dutt's candidature for Lucknow." Singh however admitted "they (Congress) had a claim on the seat."

Source : PTI