Ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, there is now a possibility that Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party will tie-up with All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Asaduddin Owaisi. The report comes a day after the Samajwadi Party appeared to have finalised a pre-poll alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal. In October, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party had also allied with the SP.

Last week on Sunday, Owaisi had indicated that the AIMIM was in talks with other parties to form an alliance. “Our party has decided to contest elections on 100 seats. We are in talks with one or two more parties and time will tell if we form an alliance or not,” he told news agency ANI. In total, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly has 403 seats.

SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar told  that the SP was open to a tie-up with the AIMIM. The SP ally however insisted that there was no possibility of Owaisi contesting 100 seats if he became a part of the alliance. “Nobody will give 100 seats to anyone. It will be better to fight 10 seats, rather than a hundred. Contest from 100 and lose 100…or contest from 10 and win all 10,” he said. 

Rajbhar said that he had made it clear to the AIMIM that nobody would allot 100 seats to the party. “If you want to talk about 10 seats, we can talk,” he added.

While the SP-RLD alliance has not yet been formally announced, the two parties have reportedly come to an agreement. According to an IANS update quoting sources, Yadav has agreed to give 36 seats to Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD during a meeting on Tuesday. Six of those seats would be contested by Samajwadi Party candidates under the RLD symbol. 

Earlier this year, the AIMIM had been a part of the Bhagedari Sankalp Morcha – an alliance of nine smaller parties led by Rajbhar. The SBSP’s decision to break away from the grouping had been a blow to Owaisi’s efforts to stitch together an alliance of non-BJP parties ahead of the Assembly polls. The Hyderabad MP had earlier indicated that his party was in talks with Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Yadav and Azad Samaj Party chief Chandra Shekhar Azad.

At the beginning of November however, Akhilesh Yadav had announced that the SP would stitch an alliance with his uncle’s (Shivpal Singh Yadav) party. Reportedly, the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) Chief has demanded 100 seats as part of the alliance deal with SP. No official announcement has been made thus far.