With the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections due in February next year, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress, key constituents of the Opposition INDIA bloc, have intensified their efforts to identify seats that could be shared between them, even as both the allies concede that their seat-sharing exercise is going to be a rocky affair.

While the All India Congress Committee (AICC) leadership has asked its secretaries handling UP party matters to identify seats it would bargain for in negotiations with its senior state ally, SP president Akhilesh Yadav has also started getting feedback from his party leaders from all 75 districts on the seat-sharing issue.

SP sources said Akhilesh has asked his senior leaders, MPs and MLAs from across the state to recommend one seat in their district which the party may offer to the Congress at the initial stage of their talks.

Sources said Akhilesh is finalising a list of 60-80 seats for the Congress, while also identifying the SP’s probable candidates for all 403 seats in the state keeping in view the contingency of their talks coming a cropper.

Congress insiders said while the party would begin negotiations by demanding about 120 seats, it could eventually settle for around 80 seats as part of an alignment with the SP.

Top UP Congress leaders told The Indian Express that they will try to “convince” the party high command to “not ally with the SP”. “This is what the BJP wants – the Congress and SP coming together – so they can attack us on appeasement, SP’s past track record on law and order and other issues,” said a senior Congress leader, who said he would soon meet Rahul Gandhi to convince him “not to join hands with the SP”.

“We don’t mind a post-poll alliance with the SP, but going together in the polls will be suicidal for us,” the Congress leader claimed.

Some leaders of both the parties agree that their alliance would get a boost if they are able to finalise a seat sharing agreement soon as it would give them as well as their candidates a head start in preparing the ground in their seats.

However, this process is likely to be marked with hard bargaining and friction over various prickly issues, which may complicate and delay it.

While the top brass of the SP and the Congress are keen to forge an alliance for the 2027 elections, sections of their second or third-rung leaders do not seem to be in its favour, fearing fewer seats for their probable candidates.

Several SP leaders claim that the Congress does not have a “strong base” in the state. Countering it, some Congress leaders maintain that it was because of the grand old party that the SP-Congress alliance could win 43 parliamentary seats of the state’s 80 in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. They argue that it was because of Rahul Gandhi’s “Save the Constitution” pitch in 2024 which resonated with various groups, especially Dalits, which helped their alliance get the better of the BJP.

The SP leaders, for their part, cite the 2022 Assembly polls when both the parties contested separately. The Congress had then managed to win just two of 403 seats with just 2.33% vote share.

The relations between the SP and the Congress have always been marked with ups and downs. In October 2023, the two parties had bitter exchanges, when UP Congress chief Ajay Rai called Akhilesh a “chirkut” (small fry). It had started after the Congress declined to give any seats to the SP in the Madhya Pradesh elections, forcing the latter to declare its candidates in 30 seats.

The run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls saw Akhilesh taking on the Congress and questioning its credibility. However, after days of tension, he finally made peace with the Congress after having a conversation with Rahul Gandhi. The SP later sealed a pact with the Congress, allotting it 17 seats, which surprised many. A key factor behind their tie-up was their understanding that if they went their own ways, the Muslim vote may split in the state.

While their seat-sharing talks have yet to begin, some Congress leaders have already struck discordant notes, upsetting Akhilesh.

Last month, two senior Dalit party leaders – AICC’s Scheduled Caste department chairman Rajendra Pal Gautam and UP MP Tanuj Punia – showed up at BSP chief Mayawati’s house in Lucknow unannounced. They however could not meet her as there was no appointment.

Their posturing, Congress insiders said, was aimed at sending out a signal that the party may have other alliance options beyond the SP too. While the Congress issued the two leaders show-cause notices, Akhilesh was not amused. He is learnt to have told his party leaders that he will have a discussion with Rahul Gandhi on the need to curb such developments that could dent the prospects of their alliance.

In June 2025, Congress MP Imran Masood stirred the pot by claiming that the “80-17 formula” would not work in the 2027 Assembly polls. Masood was referring to their seat-sharing arrangement for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The SP hit back, with party MP and Akhilesh’s cousin Dharmendra Yadav saying in an interview to The Indian Express that Masood did not have powers to take a call on seat sharing.

The Congress has been claiming since the 2024 elections that while the SP gave it a respectable number of seats, the “quality” of some seats was not as per its preferences, referring to the ones where an anti-BJP party may have “an advantage because of conducive social arithmetic”.

This row surfaced again in the subsequent Assembly bypolls in 12 seats, when the Congress decided against entering the fray as it held that a few seats offered by the SP was “not winnable”. The seats the SP was willing to give to the Congress included Ghaziabad and Khair, which are considered the BJP strongholds.

For the 2027 polls too, said Congress sources, the party would pressure the SP to part with seats whose social equations would favour its chances. This may be an uphill task because of their overlapping support bases such as the Muslim community.