Congress' Uttar Pradesh unit seeks finalization of alliance with SP

New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS) Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the chief of Congress' Uttar Pradesh unit Tuesday met party president Sonia Gandhi and requested the party high command to finalize the pre-poll alliance with Samajwadi Party as soon as possible so that they could start the campaign process.

'I met Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and asked them to finalize the alliance and seat sharing with Samajwadi Party. We want to start the campaign procedure process at the earliest,' she told reporters.

Joshi even invited the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) to join the front against Mayawati, whom she charged with working in an 'undemocratic way' and having a latent alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

For the number of seats that Congress wants to contest in alliance with Samajwadi Party, Joshi said: 'We have given a list of 31 seats and we hope that we both would contest for the respectable number of seats keeping the ground realities in mind.'

On the issue of coming together of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and its impact on the alliance with Congress, Joshi said any decision on this would be taken by the party high command.