 "kamal nath, digvijaya singh")
Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Monday said that his party colleague Kamal Nath wanted to have an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls "with full honesty."
He said, "Kamal Nath had sent Congress leader Ashok Singh to me for a discussion with SP leaders led by Deep Narayan Yadav. We discussed at his residence in Bhopal. They [SP] had won one seat Bijawar [in Bundelkhand region in 2018 polls] and were second in two others. The SP wanted six seats, but I suggested Nath leave four seats for the SP."
"Later, the matter went to the Congress Working Committee and the party's central leadership, but they left the issue of [tie-up with SP] to the state leadership," he said.
"I don't know where this talk [of alliance in MP] got derailed. But as far as Nath is concerned, I can say he wanted to have an alliance with the SP with full honesty," he added.
Talking to reporters at his residence in Bhopal, he sought to downplay the war of wards between the Congress and the SP that erupted after the national outfit did not allocate any Assembly seat to the Yadav-led party despite the two being constituents of the INDIA alliance.
"It is okay... friendly fights do take place between alliance partners, but I know the SP and Akhilesh will never go with the BJP," Digvijaya Singh said.
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Cracks in SP-Congress relation
The relationship between the SP and the Congress party has been strained lately, with Yadav being dissatisfied over the failure to achieve a seat-sharing strategy for the forthcoming Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. The SP was hoping to strike up an alliance to topple the BJP government in the state. However, nothing of that sort has happened, and now, Yadav has deemed it to be a "betrayal" and has been attacking his INDIA ally publicly.
The SP chief said that the Congress party should inform his side "straight that they don't need Samajwadis", news agency PTI quoted him as saying.
"I promise you that we will not talk about alliance even once and will begin preparation to defeat the BJP on our own," he said, adding that Congress should refrain from conspiring and betraying the SP.
The continuing tension between the SP and Congress poses scepticism regarding the INDIA bloc's future months before the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Meanwhile, the SP announced its fourth list of 12 candidates on Sunday, and has so far announced 46 names for the November 17 polls to the 230-member assembly in Madhya Pradesh.
The state is scheduled to go for Assembly polls on November 17. The election would be conducted in a single phase, and the counting would be done on December 3.
