Congress Pushes Its Luck With The Samajwadi Party In UP

As the next round of state elections nears, the decibel levels have started rising, especially around Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically crucial state. The BJP has been in power since 2017 and is hoping to make it three victories in a row in February 2027. The opposition, meanwhile, believes it has a real chance of dethroning the BJP.

However, before it could train its guns on the BJP, the Opposition had started targeting itself. A war of words has broken out between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress over the Congress’s seemingly indigestible demand to contest almost 200 of the 403 seats. Akhilesh Yadav tried to douse the fire, saying the issue should not be how many seats a party contests but its prospects of winning them.

Winning seats matters in an election. Government formation depends not on the share of votes polled but on numbers. A party or alliance can form the government only after crossing the halfway mark, which in Uttar Pradesh is 202.

There is little doubt that the Samajwadi Party is the principal and most formidable challenger to the BJP in the state. But it may not be strong enough on its own. It needs an alliance and the support of smaller parties.

Election Results Expose Congress’s Weakness

The last two elections expose the weakness of the Congress’s claim. In 2022, its alliance overtures were rejected by both the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. Forced to contest alone, it could not even find candidates in all 403 constituencies. It contested 399 seats, secured 2.33 per cent of the votes and won just two. By contrast, the Samajwadi Party contested 347 seats, polled 32.06 per cent and won 111.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the two parties joined hands as part of the wider Opposition alliance. The Samajwadi Party contested 62 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats and won 37. The Congress contested 17 and won six. Together, the Opposition alliance won 43 seats, seven more than the 36 secured by the BJP-led NDA.

There was a reason the Samajwadi Party had been reluctant to ally with the Congress. The two were together in the 2017 election, with Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi as the alliance’s poster boys. Yet, they had “friendly fights” in 23 constituencies. The Samajwadi Party contested 311 seats and won 47, while the Congress won only seven of the 114 it contested.

Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Samajwadi Party founder, minced no words in blaming the Congress for pulling his party down. “Alliance with the Congress is responsible for the present poor state of the party. I had advised Akhilesh not to go ahead with it, but he did. The SP is itself responsible for its defeat and not the people of the state,” he had said.

A History Of Distrust Between Allies

The Congress has never been comfortable with the Samajwadi Party, whose rise came at its expense. The Congress ruled Uttar Pradesh until 1989, with brief interruptions during the political churn of the late 1960s and the Janata Party years between 1977 and 1980. The Samajwadi Party was born in 1992, after Mulayam Singh Yadav walked out of the Janata Dal and gradually ate into the Congress’s support among Muslims and the OBCs.

The Congress also had reason to remember Mulayam’s last-minute retreat when Sonia Gandhi staked a claim to form the government after the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government lost the confidence motion by one vote in 1999. The Samajwadi Party had been with the Opposition, but Mulayam pulled back from supporting Sonia, with her Italian origin then being a major political issue. Sonia withdrew her claim, and a fresh election followed.

When the Congress returned to power in 2004, Mulayam faced allegations of amassing wealth beyond his known sources of income. The charges were subsequently dropped. In 2008, the Samajwadi Party helped save the Manmohan Singh government after the Left withdrew support over the India-US civil nuclear deal. Having won more seats in 2009 and no longer needing the Samajwadi Party’s support, the Congress-led UPA stopped courting it.

Alliance Seen As Political Compulsion

Come 2027, with both parties having been kept out of power for years, their association is more a compulsion than a choice. They know that a divided Opposition would damage their prospects of denying the BJP a third term in Uttar Pradesh. The 2027 election is also crucial if the Opposition hopes to mount a serious challenge to the BJP at the Centre in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.

The current exchange of barbs may be political posturing. For now, it is largely confined to junior functionaries and leaders in the second tier. But the scars could linger, allowing the BJP to ridicule its opponents in public. One Samajwadi Party leader even claimed that Rahul Gandhi might not have won Rae Bareli in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls without the party’s support.

The Congress is certainly stronger in Uttar Pradesh than it was a decade ago, but its actual strength remains untested. It is not yet on a par with the Samajwadi Party.

The BJP will be hoping that the bickering escalates and the proposed alliance falls apart before seat-sharing begins. A split in votes against the BJP would make its task of winning another term in Uttar Pradesh easier.

Ajay Jha is a senior journalist, author and political commentator.

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Published on: Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 09:36 PM IST