150 seats, one alliance and a wary partner: Congress's UP plan meets Samajwadi Party arithmetic

Lucknow: As the Congress and the Samajwadi Party explore an alliance for the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly election, tensions over seat-sharing are rising. Congress is preparing to stake its claim on a substantial number of seats.
According to reports, the party has drawn up a list of seats it wants to contest, with party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra personally monitoring the exercise. All of this, however, is said to be at the internal discussion stage.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has made clear that the question is not how many seats a party contests but its prospects of winning them. Uttar Pradesh has 403 assembly seats, and a party or alliance needs 202 to form a government.
The 2022 election is often cited to gauge the strength of the Congress claim: contesting 399 seats, it won just two, while the Samajwadi Party contested 347 and won 111. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the two parties fought together — the Samajwadi Party won 37 seats and the Congress six.
The current exchange of barbs is largely confined to junior functionaries and second-tier leaders. But the scars could linger and allow the BJP to ridicule its opponents well before seat-sharing talks begin, political observers say.
In the 2017 election, the two parties were together, with Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi as the alliance's faces, 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.