SP-Cong to contest 2027 U.P. polls jointly, hints Akhilesh

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday gave clear signals that his party will contest the 2027 UP assembly polls in alliance with the Congress.

- HT Correspondents [e-mail]

PRAYAGRAJ/LUCKNOW:

Akhilesh used "INDIA alliance" to make his point instead of directly taking the name of the Congress. For all practical purposes, in U.P. INDIA bloc means only the SP and the Congress, and the two parties had jointly bagged 43 seats in the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

If the Congress and the SP stay together in 2027, this will be the third time in UP that the two parties will contest the polls together since Akhilesh took over the reins of the SP. Before 2024, it was in 2017 that the two parties contested the UP assembly polls jointly. Though the narrative of 'UP Ke Ladke' back in 2017 had failed to leave any significant mark, both the Samajwadi Party and the Congress fared well when they contested the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as partners under the INDIA alliance.