There are strong indications that the Samajwadi Party and the Congress will come together to take on the might of the BJP in the 2027 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, but the prospective alliance seems to be facing several hurdles.
Imran Masood, the Congress MP of Saharanpur, has said the party “is prepared” to contest 42 per cent of the Assembly seats in the state. The SP, however, does not seem amenable at the moment to parting with more than 10 per cent seats.
“We have prepared a list of 170 seats (Uttar Pradesh has 403 Assembly constituencies) where we are in a position to win. Although the final decision will be taken by our leader Rahul Gandhi, it is obvious that we want to contest more than 150 seats,” Masood said.
Sources in the SP said party chief Akhilesh Yadav was not ready to give more than 40 seats to the Congress. The SP had won 111 seats and the Congress 2 in the 2022 Assembly elections.
Akhilesh has not yet said anything directly about the number of seats the SP would like to contest, but he has made his intentions clear.
“The INDIA bloc had defeated the BJP in many seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The same alliance will throw out the BJP in UP in 2027,” he was quoted as saying in a meeting of his party workers on Tuesday. “The Congress should show a larger heart and bank on those who are in a stronger position to defeat the BJP in the state,” he added.
However, at least one leader of the NDA bloc in Uttar Pradesh has claimed that the SP’s own house is not in order and the party might split like many other Opposition powerhouses, the latest example being the Trinamool Congress.
BJP ally Om Prakash Rajbhar, the state panchayati raj minister and chief of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, told the media on Wednesday: “The SP is on the verge of a split. Forget the TMC in Bengal and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, SP leaders are set to join the BJP.”
SP leaders ridiculed Rajbhar, dubbing him “a toy” in the BJP’s hands and asserting that their party was as strong and intact as before. Akhilesh said: “The SP remains united. It has weathered many ups and downs. It is a strong party, and it remains so.”
As far as the anti-BJP pre-poll alliance is concerned, the Congress is not the only party with which the SP wants to ally. Reacting to AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi’s remark that he was open to an alliance with non-BJP parties, SP general secretary and Akhilesh’s uncle Ram Gopal Yadav said: “We welcome all those who want to dislodge the BJP from the state.”
A senior SP leader told this newspaper on Wednesday that his party was much more powerful in the state than the Congress and “giving them 100 seats is out of the question”.
The leader said on condition of anonymity as no official tie-up has been announced yet: “We are the big brothers in UP and are prepared to give them 40 seats. We believe they don’t even have 40 winning candidates in the state. It may so happen that we will get some SP candidates to contest on Congress tickets. We know many Congress leaders wouldn’t agree to this, but Rahul will not raise any objection. He is very liberal with his allies. He also understands that as the election approaches, there will be smaller regional allies with whom we will have to share seats.”
A Congress leader said many in the party felt Rahul was too malleable “at the cost of the party’s interests”.
“That is the reason we are losing election after election in the heartland,” the Congress leader said, requesting not to be named.
He pointed out that many SP leaders had contested Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the past on Congress tickets even though the Congress had a strong candidate.
“It has also happened that despite an alliance in past elections, the SP fielded its candidates in seats that were assigned to the Congress,” he added.
The Congress and the SP had fought the 2017 Assembly polls in an alliance, but there were over a dozen seats, including Lucknow Central, where both parties had fielded candidates. This sent out a message to the electorate that the anti-BJP front had failed to keep its flock together, many believe. The Congress had contested 105 seats officially and won only 2.
In 2024, Ujjawal Raman Singh of the SP contested the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket and won. Officially, the Congress had been assigned 17 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, with the party winning 6. The SP bagged 37 seats. Many in the Congress believe that while the party had transferred its votes to the SP in seats where alliance candidates were fielded, there was little reciprocation.