Congress will contest alone in UP Poll

TIL Desk/National/Lucknow/ Amidst indications that SP leader and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is warming up to the idea of an alliance with Congress, UP PCC President Raj Babbar today said his party will contest alone in the state and described such talks as “hypothetical”.

“Alliance talks in some way demoralises workers. I have no such information. The party leadership has not asked me to look for a tie up and it’s not under consideration.This is hypothetical,” he told. Recently Akhilesh had said that his party was capable enough to get majority on its own but if there was an alliance with Congress, they would together get over 300 seats, trigerring speculation of a pre-poll tieup.

Akhilesh’s father and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has already ruled out any pre-poll alliance, asserting that there can only be mergers. The Chief Minister, however, had said that a final decision on the alliance will be taken by the SP supremo and he can only give suggestions.

Akhilesh also suggested that Congress will have to accept that it may have to fight on a fewer number of seats than it wants in an alliance because a tie-up will not work out if it keeps thinking about “profit and loss”.