Sonia-Mulayam meeting sets tongues wagging

Lucknow, Sep 28 (IANS) Congress president Sonia Gandhi's meeting with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav here Saturday evening has set the tongues wagging.

Gandhi, on a two-day visit to her constituency Rae Bareli ending Saturday, held an hour-long discussion with Yadav in the VVIP lounge of the Amausi airport and later they boarded the same flight to New Delhi.

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Samajwadi Party leaders maintained the meet was a coincidence. 'Yadav was not aware Gandhi was also taking the same flight. It was a coincidence that both reached the airport at the same time,' party spokesman Swami Prasad Maurya told IANS Sunday.

Congress general secretary and Sonia Gandhi's son Rahul Gandhi, during his visit to Gorakhpur region earlier this month, also held a closed door meeting with Yadav's son Akhilesh Singh Yadav in Deoria district.

Both parties had termed that meeting as coincidence too and not divulged the details of their conversation to the media.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Samajwadi Party leader said: 'It is possible that the Congress and Samajwadi Party have reached a concrete decision on seat sharing for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and this could have been a major point of discussion between Gandhi and Yadav.'