Akhilesh Yadav's Seat-Sharing Hint: SP-Congress Alliance Seeks 45% of UP Assembly Seats

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, in a conversation with a media house, presented the Congress's demand for 181 seats as "add one more to 180." He was trying to put it in a lighter vein, but the statement reflected political pressure. The figure of 181 in the 403-seat UP assembly is about 45 percent. In 2022, the Congress got only 2.33 percent of the vote and two seats. The SP-Congress alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha was successful, but the mathematics of the assembly is different. Akhilesh's answer made it clear that seat-sharing talks have now reached the grassroots level and the Congress is demanding a bigger share in seat-sharing. This is the first time after the new alliance of Owaisi-Chandrasekhar Azad, Akhilesh gave a concrete indication on the seats to be given to the Congress. Earlier, SP leaders used to avoid such questions. He repeatedly said that the Congress's status is not more than 50 seats. Akhilesh himself is accepting this figure from the public forum. Chandrashekhar Owaisi and Owaisi did not announce a change in the SP-Congress's social front.