Congress Wants 170 Seats in UP, But Its 2022 Tally Leaves SP Unconvinced
The seat-sharing talks between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections have begun on a note of open friction. The Congress, buoyed by the 2024 Lok Sabha verdict, has staked a claim to contest roughly 170 of the state's 403 Assembly seats. The Samajwadi Party, its senior partner in the INDIA bloc, is unconvinced — and the numbers explain why.
According to media reports citing party sources, the Congress has identified around 170 constituencies where it believes it can make a credible claim, and has shared an initial list of 172 seats with the SP leadership. The list has been divided into four categories — A, B, C and D — based on the party's preferences and its own assessment of electoral prospects, reports citing CNN-News18 said.
The Congress has nearly finalised its stand on the Category A seats, leaving little room for compromise, while some adjustments could be considered in Category B. Seats in Categories C and D, the party has signalled, are open to negotiation.
The groundwork for the demand has been laid over weeks of internal deliberation. Three internal meetings chaired by Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were held before the list was shared with the Samajwadi Party, and discussions between leaders of the two sides have formally begun.
UP Congress in-charge Rajendra Pal Gautam confirmed that the party has shared the list with SP leaders, adding that the leadership of both parties will sit together to thrash out the details of the seat-sharing arrangement. Gautam has publicly called for equal respect and an equal share in the alliance, and has argued that the party should contest up to half of the state's Assembly seats.
Congress sources insist the party is not insisting on one fixed number, but wants what it calls a "respectable share" in the alliance. Some reports suggest that, in formal negotiations, Congress leaders are seeking at least 115 to 120 constituencies in the 403-member House.
But the past record of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh casts a long shadow over the claim. In the 2017 Assembly elections, the party contested 114 seats in alliance with the SP and won only seven; the Samajwadi Party that year won 47 of the 311 seats it contested. In 2022, the Congress went solo across the state, contesting 399 seats, and ended up with just two seats and about 2.33 per cent of the vote.
This is a party that ruled Uttar Pradesh uninterrupted until 1989, and has not won more than a handful of Assembly seats in nearly a decade.
What has changed, in the Congress's telling, is 2024. The two parties contested the Lok Sabha elections together in Uttar Pradesh, and the partnership delivered one of the most striking opposition performances in recent memory. The Samajwadi Party won 37 of the state's 80 Lok Sabha seats, the Congress won six of the 17 it contested, and the BJP was limited to 33 seats — down from 62 in 2019 and 71 in 2014.
Congress leaders are heavily leveraging that performance, arguing that the momentum of 2024 should now carry into the Assembly polls. "It's obvious. The 2024 Lok Sabha results were proof that together the two parties can make an impact. In politics, there has to be room for meaningful give and take," a senior Congress leader was quoted as saying.
The harder test, however, lies across the table. The Samajwadi Party is reportedly unwilling to give its junior ally more than 60 to 80 seats. One SP MP has gone further, publicly suggesting that the Congress should accept 50 seats.
"I think our party leader Akhilesh Yadav has made it clear that winnability is the sole criterion for contesting the polls. Anyone can demand anything, but in politics, to reach an acceptable and meaningful solution, you have to move beyond posturing," a senior SP leader told PTI. Analyst Rasheed Kidwai has similarly described the Congress demand as a "mere posture", stressing that seat-sharing depends on demonstrated electoral strength.
There is also a structural problem with the Congress argument. Lok Sabha success does not transfer neatly to Assembly constituencies. A parliamentary election is fought on a national canvas with a strong ally; Assembly contests turn on local candidates, caste arithmetic and booth-level machinery — precisely the things the Congress has lacked in Uttar Pradesh.
The halfway mark in the 403-member Assembly is 202, and the gap between the 50-odd seats the SP appears willing to concede and the 170 the Congress is eyeing defines the real bargaining space of the next few months.
Tensions have already surfaced in public. Congress MP Imran Masood recently criticised the Samajwadi Party, arguing that the Congress should not compromise its own political prospects merely to help SP president Akhilesh Yadav become chief minister. Masood maintained that the Congress would not "ruin itself" for the sake of another party's political ambitions — a remark that underlines how transactional the negotiations have become.
The Congress, for its part, says it is rebuilding to avoid a repeat of 2022. The party has appointed Abhishek Dutt, Kunal Choudhary, Jagdish Chander Jangid, Sanjeev Arya and Varun Choudhary as AICC secretaries attached to the UP in-charge, and claims to have analysed 20 years of electoral data to identify the seats it wants.
A recent leadership change in the state — former UP Congress chief Ajay Rai replaced by Congress MLA Aradhana Misra Mona — is also believed to have been factored in to facilitate an amicable seat-sharing arrangement.
The backdrop to the talks is a transformed political landscape in the state. In 2017, the BJP won a landslide 312 seats in the 403-member Assembly. In 2022, the BJP retained power with 255 seats while the SP improved to 111. The 2024 Lok Sabha outcome gave the opposition fresh hope, and both parties agree they will jointly contest the 2027 polls. What remains unresolved is the price of partnership.
For the Samajwadi Party, the calculation is straightforward: having made the biggest dent in the BJP's fortress in 2024 and holding 111 Assembly seats from 2022, it sees itself as the natural senior partner and will not surrender winnable seats on the basis of a demand it views as posturing. For the Congress, the calculation is existential: a party that once ruled the state is fighting for relevance in its Assembly arithmetic, and the 2024 verdict is the only currency it has.
Between the Congress's opening bid and the SP's counter-offer lies a negotiation that will shape the opposition's campaign in India's most populous state. How the two sides bridge the gap — and whether the alliance holds through the bargaining — will be one of the defining political stories of the months ahead.
(Reporting based on Moneycontrol, the Times of India, the Daily Pioneer and Outlook India.)