Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh on Monday declared that the Indian National Congress holds no independent political ground in Uttar Pradesh and can secure electoral gains only by leaning on a formal alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP). His remarks, made in Gonda, come as the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections increasingly dominate political calculations across the state.

What Brij Bhushan Said

Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was pointed in his assessment. “They have no standing of their own. They can win only a few seats by riding on the Samajwadi Party’s shoulders. And Congress has no standing of its own in Uttar Pradesh. Now, if they contest as part of an alliance, they may benefit somewhat,” he said.

The remarks are a direct challenge to Congress’s recent posturing, with the party pushing for an early start to seat-sharing negotiations with the SP and insisting that alliance seats be allocated on the basis of ‘winnability’ rather than a simple numerical split across constituencies.

SP Stays Silent, Congress Pushes Forward

SP MP Ram Gopal Yadav, when asked to respond to Singh’s statement, declined to engage. “What can we comment on that? I have nothing to say,” he told reporters.

Congress, meanwhile, has signalled intent to contest the 2027 polls from a position of organisational strength. Rajendra Pal Gautam, recently appointed as the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge for Uttar Pradesh, said the party would approach the election with ‘equality and respect’ — language widely read as a demand for parity in any alliance arrangement.

A History of Uneven Alliances

The Congress-SP relationship in Uttar Pradesh has been marked by ambition and underperformance. In the 2017 Assembly election, the two parties ran together under the ‘UP ke do ladke’ banner — a reference to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. Congress was allotted 106 of the state’s 403 Assembly seats but managed to win just seven.

The alliance broke down ahead of 2022, when Congress contested independently and fared even worse, winning only two seats. That result appeared to validate the BJP’s argument about Congress’s diminished organisational capacity in the state.

2024 Lok Sabha Results Changed the Equation

The political calculus shifted notably after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress-SP combine contested the parliamentary polls together and captured a combined 43 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats — a result that revived confidence in the alliance’s electoral potential and reignited debate about its viability for the 2027 Assembly contest.

That performance has given Congress fresh leverage in seat-sharing talks, even as critics like Brij Bhushan argue the gains were driven by SP’s ground machinery rather than Congress’s own voter base. How the two parties resolve the tension between Congress’s ‘winnability’ demand and SP’s seat-count arithmetic will likely define the opposition’s shape heading into 2027.