Lucknow: The fate of the alliance between Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections continued to hang in the balance on Saturday, even as Congress leaders Gulam Nabi Azad and a special emissary of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were holding talks with the SP to thrash out issues.

SP leaders remained unmoved on Congress demands for more seats.

Chief Minister and national president of the SP Akhilesh Yadav is to release his party’s manifesto on Sunday, spokesman Rajendra Chowdhary said. Earlier it was supposed to be happening at a joint event of the Congress and SP.

Samajwadi Party’s Maharastra state unit leader Abu Aazmi also said the SP had given enough space to the Congress and that before seeking more seats, the Congress should look at its “haisiyat” (real situation). Independent legislator from Kunda in Pratapgarh Raghuraj Pratao Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya also said that the SP should go it alone.

After meeting the SP mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav, Raja Bhaiyya, who is a minister in the Akhilesh Yadav cabinet, advocated that the SP should go it alone in the polls and expressed confidence that the party was in a position to form the next government on its own. “I am very confident that the SP under Akhilesh Yadav will romp home again and that there was no need to enter into an alliance with Congress,” he said.

The statements are being seen as an indication that the SP leadership was not very keen to tie up with the Congress though initially the first step was taken by the ruling party only. Akhilesh Yadav, then battling power centres within his own party, had said a tie-up with the Congress would mean 300-plus seats for the combine.

On Friday however things changed dramatically when the Samajwadi Party went ahead unilaterally and declared 208 candidates that included names for seats where the Congress had won in 2012 assembly polls. Amid protests from the Congress, the SP leader made it clear that they had been accommodative enough and there was no possibility of giving them more seats.

Sources in the Congress camp however continue to be optimistic about the alliance taking shape soon.