Samajwadi Party's list of 77 nominees, leaves 3 seats for Congress in Raebareli

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party today released a list of 77 candidates, leaving three seats for Congress in Raebareli, hours after the two parties decided to contest the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections as alliance partners. With today's list, SP has so far released tickets for 285 candidates for the state polls. It left three seats for Congress in its pocket borough of Raebareli and announced its candidates on the rest three. The state has a total of 403 constituencies. Besides, the ruling party has not fielded any candidate for Kunda seat where Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya is sitting as Independent MLA and is a minister in Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's cabinet. In today's list, the party announced 77 candidates in Pratapgarh, Haushami, Allahabad, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Banda, Chitrakoot, Fatehpur, Raebareli, Gonda, Siddharth Nagar, Basti, Sultanpur, Mahrajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Mau, Ballia, Jaupur, Ghazipur, Bhadohi, Mirzapur and Sonebhadra districts. SP has given Mau seat, held by Mukhtar Ansari of Quami Ekta Dal (QED) to Altaf Ansari, who had in last elections lost out to Mukhtar. Capping days of feverish parleys, Congress and Samajwadi Party forged an alliance to contest the UP Assembly polls together. At a joint press conference here, leaders of the two parties said SP will contest 298 of the 403 seats and Congress the remaining 105.