The Congress on Thursday released its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections and used it for political posturing in the most critical state of Uttar Pradesh, sending out a loud message to the SP-BSP combine that relinquishing its strong seats was out of question.

Out of around 400 seats that the Congress will contest across the country, the leadership deliberately chose Uttar Pradesh to begin with as fresh negotiations for a possible understanding with the SP-BSP has started.

The Congress announced 11 candidates from Uttar Pradesh to demonstrate its inflexible resolve to field all its key leaders. There are at least 10 more leaders who will undoubtedly contest, which means the possibility of agreeing to an alliance by accepting less than 20 seats is not an option.

While sources in the Congress and the SP asserted that the chances of a grand alliance were almost nil, some leaders still believe a tacit understanding could be worked out in some seats.

The Congress’s first list has the names of Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli), scotching speculation about her possible retirement from electoral politics, and Rahul Gandhi (Amethi).

There had been a buzz in some quarters that Rahul would avoid contesting from the pocket borough of Amethi because of the purported rise of the BJP’s Smriti Irani, who has been nurturing the constituency since her defeat in 2014.

While Salman Khurshid will contest from his traditional seat Farrukhabad, Jitin Prasad and R.P.N. Singh will enter the fray from Dhaurahra and Kushinagar. The other candidates are Rajaram Pal (Akbarpur), Brijlal Khabri (Jalaun), Nirmal Khatri (Faizabad), Annu Tandon (Unnao), Imran Masood (Saharanpur) and Saleem Sherwani (Badaun).

The other four candidates are for Gujarat: Raju Parmar (Ahmedabad West), Bharatsinh Solanki (Anand), Prashant Patel (Vadodara) and Ranjit Mohansinh Rathwa (Chhota Udaipur).