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New Delhi:

Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party has released its third list of five seats for the Lok Sabha elections amid tussle with the Congress over the issue. One of the five candidates has been fielded from Varanasi, the seat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The other four are Kairana, Badayun, Bareilly and Hamirpur.

This takes the total number of candidates announced by the party to 32 — earlier they announced 16 and 11 candidates in two tranches.

The unilateral list comes hours after the SP gave its final offer of 17 seats to the Congress — up from the initial 11. The hike came after Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal set to be part of the NDA.

But the Congress, which is holding out for one or two more seats, is yet to respond.

In 2019, the Congress had gone solo in Uttar Pradesh, contesting a chunk of the state’s 80 seats. But it managed to win only one — Sonia Gandhi’s Raebareli — down from two. Rahul Gandhi lost family bastion Amethi to the BJP’s Smriti Irani.

The Samajwadi Party had argued that there is no reason to expect a better result from the Congress this time round. There is speculation that it could be worse, with Sonia Gandhi bowing out of the Lok Sabha election and joining the Rajya Sabha.

The Samajwadi Party has put on a freeze decision to join Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which is currently passing through Uttar Pradesh.

For INDIA, a rift in Uttar Pradesh could spell disaster. The state sends the maximum number of members to the Lok Sabha, followed by Maharashtra and Bengal — two other states where seat sharing talks remain unresolved.

In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee  has declared that she would go solo and decide on her INDIA bloc membership only after the election. Her peeved response came after Congress refused to accept her offer of two seats and demanded a chunk.

In Maharashtra, talks have been stalled over eight seats that include Pune and two seats in Mumbai.