The long-awaited, much hyped Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh is "99 per cent off" said a senior congress leader as the Congress is all set to release a list of 24 candidates in Uttar Pradesh in the absence of Mulayam Singh Yadav giving his nod to the alliance.
Officially the Congress would wait for another couple of days before giving a formal burial to the alliance which was set to take on Mayawati but Congress leaders who have been involved in the exercise for the last couple of months say that the Samajwadi Party played dirty with them by announcing 64 seats out of 80 which is not done when two prospective alliance partners are involved in seat sharing talks.
Sources said that Sonia Gandhi had the list of 24 candidates ready with her since February 24 but had waited in the expectation that Mulayam Singh Yadav would "see reason" and agree to the Congress demands to adjust its senior leaders. But in the meeting between Gandhi and Yadav, the Samajwadi Party chief agreed to only 17 seats but these did not include the party's senior leaders who were not members of Parliament.
A senior leader said that if all the known and visible faces of the Congress party like Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Salman Khurshid, Begum Noor Bano, R PN.Singh and others do not contest the elections because "it does not suit Mulayanm Singh yadav that they should contest" then absolutely the wrong signal would go to the party's rank and file and
that was not acceptable to the leadership.
Party leaders said that