Congress has failed to gauge ground situation in UP: SP

Blaming a "very senior" Congress leader from outside Uttar Pradesh for the failure of seat sharing talks, the Samajwadi Party on Friday said it had offered 17 seats to the Congress which failed to gauge the ground reality in Uttar Pradesh.

"Even after the recent Bhadohi assembly byelection, the party failed to realise the difference between the 2,000 votes polled by its candidate and over 60,000 votes polled by the SP nominee," SP leader Amar Singh told reporters after the national executive meeting of the party.

"We had given a concrete proposal of 17 seats, five more than their claim, which was much better and honourable than the trusted and loyal United Progressive Alliance partners like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan gave them in Bihar," he said.

Reminding the Congress of the various "trying times" when the Samajwadi Party had stood by UPA government, Singh said, "It is inexplicable as to how Congress could declare its nominees on 10 of our seats in the very first list declared by it when the MPs representing them had voted in favour of the UPA government when its Left partners had deserted it."

Replying to a query, Singh, who has often crossed swords with Congress leader Digvijay Singh on the seat sharing issue, blamed a "very senior" Congress leader from outside UP for the failure of talks but did not elaborate.