More than 650 hectares of Uttarakhand land in grip of forest fires
Though no loss of life has been reported so far, officials say with the rise in mercury level the blaze is going out of control.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday extended their newly-formed alliance to Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The two parties had in January this year announced their decision to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections together from Uttar Pradesh.
In both states, the BSP will play a larger role as is evident from the comparatively higher number of seats it will contest from.
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According to the press statements issued by the two parties, the BSP will contest from three of the five Lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand while the SP will filed its candidates in the remaining two.
In Madhya Pradesh, which the Congress wrested from the BJP in the assembly elections last year, the BSP will contest from 26 of the 29 parliamentary constituencies and the SP on the remaining three – Balaghat, Thikri and Khajuraho.
While Uttarakhand has a BJP government, the Congress wrested Madhya Pradesh from the saffron party in the assembly elections held last year. The BJP holds the majority of the seats in both the states. While it has 25 MPs from Madhya Pradesh, all 5 MPs from Uttarakhand belong to the saffron party.
When they came together, both the SP and the BSP left the Congress out in the cold citing loss of vote share whenever they allied with the grand old party.
In Uttar Pradesh, the SP will fight on 37 seats and the BSP on 38 seats. Three seats have gone to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
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Among the 37 seats in the SP kitty are key BJP bastions of Lucknow, Varanasi and Gorakhpur besides its own strongholds of Kannauj, Etawah, Azamgarh and Mainpuri.
The SP-BSP alliance will not field any candidate from Amethi and Rae Bareli, the bastions of Congress.
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