'SP's alliance with Congress intact in UP': Dharmendra Yadav says INDIA bloc united, hits out at Imran Masood

Despite murmurs of unease within the INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Dharmendra Yadav, has said that the alliance with the Congress remains solid in the state. “Our alliance in UP is with the Congress and I have 100% hope that it will continue. And there will be a majority government of the INDIA bloc under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav in UP,” he said in an interview with The Indian Express.

Yadav's remarks come amid fresh friction between the two parties after Congress MP Imran Masood recently dismissed the relevance of the "80-17 formula" — the Lok Sabha seat-sharing pact in which Congress contested 17 of UP's 80 seats and SP the rest. Masood had said this formula won't apply in the 2027 Assembly polls and asserted that the SP wouldn’t be deciding seat distribution for the Congress.

Yadav dismissed Masood's comments, calling them irrelevant. "I believe that Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, and Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi can take such a decision. I don’t know when the Congress gave Masood the power to make such calls,” he said. “The top leadership of the Congress will decide based on the ground reality."

He also reaffirmed the INDIA bloc's approach to backing the dominant Opposition party in each state — a principle that led SP to support the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi. "The INDIA bloc's fundamental principle was that it would go with the strongest party in the states. In Delhi, naturally, the AAP was the main Opposition party. It was in power. Today, too, they are in the Opposition in Delhi, but they are stronger than the Congress. The decision to support the AAP was as per that principle. But this will have no impact on UP politics," Yadav said.

When asked about the number of seats the SP would be willing to spare for the Congress in 2027, Yadav made it clear that the decision lies with the party president. "Akhilesh Yadav will decide that. We are Samajwadis, we follow our leader … Those falling into the BJP’s trap can speculate on such things. We won’t fall into these traps."

Tensions over seat-sharing aren't new to the INDIA bloc, which faced similar turbulence during the run-up to the 2023 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. Despite internal disagreements, the SP-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh managed to outperform the BJP-led NDA in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.