A day after the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party announced their alliance in Uttar Pradesh leaving only two seats for the Congress Party, Congress has today announced that the party will be contesting all 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. The SP-BSP alliance will be contesting on 38 seats each excluding Amethi and Rae Bareily for Congress and two other seats for smaller allies.

At a press conference held in Lucknow, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad announced, “We will fight on all 80 seats of Uttar Pradesh in upcoming Lok Sabha elections. We are fully prepared. And just like Congress emerged number 1 party in Uttar Pradesh in 2009 Lok Sabha elections, we’ll fight on our own and win twice those number of seats in upcoming elections”.

Calling it a battle to keep India united, Azad said, “The fight over parliament is between Congress and BJP. We will definitely respect and support all other parties who support us. This is not an individual fight. This battle is to keep India united”. “If any secular party competent to fight the BJP, willing to fight the BJP, willing to go with us, we will accommodate them”, he added.

Congress had allied with SP in 2017 UP Assembly elections. “We didn’t break this alliance, public should know that. We had earlier also said that we’re ready to walk with every party that wants to defeat BJP. But we can’t force anyone. They’ve (SP-BSP) closed this chapter, so we’ll continue this fight for defeating BJP on our own”, said Azad referring to the alliance.

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According to reports, Congress is planning to organise 13 rallies of Rahul Gandhi in 13 zones of UP starting from Hapur, Moradabad and Saharanpur in Western Uttar Pradesh.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Congress had won 2 seats, SP had won 5, and BSP didn’t win any seats, while BJP had won 71 seats.