Ahead of upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Samajwadi Party has released its third list of five seats.
The party head by Akhilesh Yadav made the move amid the tussle with its INDIA opposition-bloc ally Congress over the issue.
Among the list, one of the five candidates has been fielded from Varanasi, the seat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Others have been fielded from Kairana, Badayun, Bareilly and Hamirpur.
This takes the total number of candidates announced by the party to 32. Earlier, SP had announced 16 and 11 candidates in two lists.
The announcement came hours after SP offered 17 seats to the Congress. However, the Congress is yet to respond over SP’s offer.
In 2019, the Congress had gone solo in Uttar Pradesh, contesting a chunk of the state's 80 seats. However, the party managed to win only one seat which was won by Sonia Gandhi from Raebareli.
Rahul Gandhi lost family bastion Amethi to the BJP's Smriti Irani.
For now, there seems to be no consensus between the two parties as SP 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.
