The president of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the Congress Rita Bahuguna has suggested the party president Sonia Gandhi during a recent meeting that the Congress should also have alliance with the SP at national level to avert a split in Muslim votes. The Congress president has not responded to her suggestion, however.

Bahuguna reportedly tried to impress upon the party president that having an alliance with the SP in states like Maharashtra, Assam, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other states would be beneficial to the ruling party as it would display united face of the secular forces.

Unfortunately, there are no takers to Bahuguna's proposal as majority of the leaders in the party of the firm view that Congress should not provide SP a launch pad in other states where the pro-backward party is a non-entity. Their contention is that in the majority of states across the country SP has very little influence. It is basically a UP-based party, which has a very thin presence in states like Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra that too because of Muslims in Maharashtra and OBCs in Madhya Pradesh.

The UPCC chief says the proposal for a national electoral alliance has come from the SP side. She has discussed the issue with Gandhi, as she has to repot back to SP leaders during a meeting of the two parties in Lucknow scheduled to be held on September 28. Officially, this meeting has been called to discuss the pre-poll strategy in UP where they have joined hands together to take on BSP president Mayawati.

In fact, in the last meeting of the coordination committee that has been set up to coordinate the relations between the two allies, SP general secretary Amar Singh had raised the issue. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, trouble-shooter of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress president Sonia Gandhi had advised Singh to keep it pending for discussion at a later stage, as the two have to settle down the affairs of the UP first.

The SP is trying to seek some seats from the Congress in states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Congress, which already has an alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra and strong enough in MP and Rajasthan is unwilling to oblige the SP to make inroads in its basin riding on the back of it. (EON).