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No truck with Congress in M.P., says Amar Singh

Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI: The resignation of four Samajwadi Party MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, ostensibly to join the Congress, will cast a shadow over the party’s seat-sharing talks with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh.

SP general secretary Amar Singh said here on Tuesday that the party would not have any truck with the Congress in Madhya Pradesh.

Reacting sharply to the resignation of the MLAs, Mr. Amar Singh told journalists: “Just as we gave the support of our MPs to the United Progressive Alliance government during the trust vote, we could have given these four MLAs to the Congress, instead of the party trying to wean them away from us.”

He said he had spoken to the MPPCC chief Suresh Pachauri on the issue.

On the seat-sharing talks with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, he indicated that the party was willing to give no more than about a dozen seats. There had been two rounds of talks with the Congress on pre-poll alliance and no date had been set for the third round of talks.

The SP had initially sought an alliance with the Congress in M.P., Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Karnataka. But on Tuesday, Mr. Amar Singh ruled out an alliance with the Congress in M.P. and said, “we will contest all the Assembly seats in M.P. on our own”.

In his response to the SP MLAs quitting the party, AICC general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Digvijay Singh, who is involved in seat-sharing talks with the SP, said, “The SP MLAs may have resigned in M.P. but the Congress has not admitted them.”

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