Samajwadi Party has so far released tickets for 285 candidates for the state polls.
Hours after announcing an alliance with Congress, the Samajwadi Party today released a list of 77 candidates. With today's list, Samajwadi Party has so far released tickets for 285 candidates for the state polls. It left two seats for Congress in its pocket borough of Raebareli and announced its candidates on the rest three.
Meanwhile, SP has declared 2 seats in Amethi. Both Amethi and Raebareli have five assembly seats each.
The announcement came after the two sides reached an understanding regarding seat division this morning. Sources in the Congress had said the parties have split the difference to agree on the Congress getting six more seats than the 99 seats offered yesterday by the Samajwadi Party. The Congress had initially asked for 138 seats, which was later scaled down to 110. The state has a total of 403 constituencies.
In today's list, the party announced 77 candidates in Pratapgarh, Haushami, Allahabad, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Banda, Chitrakoot, Fatehpur, Raebareli, Gonda, Siddharth Nagar, Basti, Sultanpur, Mahrajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Mau, Ballia, Jaupur, Ghazipur, Bhadohi, Mirzapur and Sonebhadra districts.
SP has given Mau seat, held by Mukhtar Ansari of Quami Ekta Dal (QED) to Altaf Ansari, who had in last elections lost out to Mukhtar.
The poll alliance was announced at a joint press conference held by UP Congress chief Raj Babbar and Samajwadi Party's state president Naresh Uttam Patel. The leaders of the two parties said SP will contest 298 of the 403 seats and Congress the remaining 105.
"Under Rahul Gandhi's ideology of empowerment of youth and Akhilesh Yadav's leadership, we have decided to form this alliance," Mr Babbar said.
(with inputs from PTI)