UP State Congress Chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi is in the capital to meet Congress President Sonia Gandhi on this issue. They are likely to discuss the future strategy of the party keeping the alliance with the SP in mind.
Although a large section of the party is vehemently opposed to the idea of the tie-up, the mood of the party brass seems to be in favour of it for the next polls. Joshi also finds merit in the alliance: "In UP, secular votes will be united if the SP and the Congress form an alliance.
We have also noticed that many anti-BJP voters prefer to abstain from voting as they feel that due to in-fighting, the secular candidates will lose. This trend will definitely change."
The UP Congress has already prepared an analytical report of all the state constituencies. However, it feels that in an alliance, the seats will be shared on the "winnability factor".
In that case, the Congress will not be in a position to get more than 40-45 seats. The winnability factor will be determined by the number of seats won by the parties in the last elections and where it stood at the second position.
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The Congress had won nine seats and was the runner-up in 17 more seats. While the party can claim these 26 seats, it will have to bargain a lot for more seats from the SP, which has 39 MPs in the current Lok Sabha.
Joshi also pointed out that in the last elections, in many seats, both the parties have lost by narrow margins. "In case there is an alliance, the final decision for which will be taken only by Sonia Gandhi, we stand a chance of wresting more seats from the BJP or the BSP. Even a 4-5 per cent addition in votes will be able to give us the edge in many seats," she observed.