The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) have divided 75 out of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh between themselves. The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) will get three seats. The grand alliance has decided not to contest from Raebareli and Amethi constituencies — represented at present by Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi respectively.
Earlier proposal
The earlier proposal was to contest from 38 seats each, but the alliance decided to give one more seat — Mathura — to RLD. The RLD will also contest from Muzaffar Nagar and Bagpat.
Constituency list
The list of constituencies inwhich SP will contest includes Kairana, Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur, Mainpuri, Firozabad, Badaun, Bareilly, Lucknow, Etawah, Kanpur, Kannauj, Jhansi, Banda, Allahabad, Kaushambi, Phulpur, Faizabad, Gonda, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Varanasi and Mirzapur.
The BSP’s list includes Saharanpur, Bijnor, Nagina, Aligarh, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Dhaurahara, Sitapur, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Kaiserganj, Basti, Salempur, Jaunpur, Bhadohi and Deoria.
The parties are likely to prepare the list of candidates within a month. Consultations are on to consider the social factors in each constituency before finalising the candidates. While the SP is facing threats from the splinter group created by Shivpal Yadav, brother of SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav, the BSP drew a blank in the 2014 elections due to the erosion of its core vote bank towards the BJP.