Akhilesh Skips INDIA Bloc Meet as UP Seat-Sharing and Rajya Sabha Polls Converge

New Delhi: Leaders of the opposition INDIA bloc assembled in the capital on 30 September for a strategy meeting focused on the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav stayed away. The stated reason was Rajya Sabha election work; LiveMint reported that the absence also spared him a face-to-face encounter with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, where the unspoken subject would have been the two parties' failure to agree on seat-sharing.

The alliance has real electoral weight. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the SP and Congress contested Uttar Pradesh together and won 43 seats: 37 for the Samajwadi Party and six for the Congress. They also captured Faizabad, the constituency that includes Ayodhya, which the BJP had won in 2019. Those numbers made the state the brightest spot in an otherwise disappointing opposition showing, and they make the current standoff over assembly seats more consequential than a routine dispute.

The 150-seat demand

Congress has candidates ready for all 403 assembly seats and has told its Uttar Pradesh unit not to settle for fewer than 150 under any alliance arrangement. Party state incharge Rajendra Pal Gautam made that position public. The Congress sees itself as a full-spectrum contender, not a junior partner.

The SP reads the same map differently. Its position is that the Congress should first name the seats where it has winnable candidates and a functioning organisation, then the broader seat-sharing conversation can begin. That sequencing is a way of forcing the Congress to show its actual strength before claiming a quota. The SP won 37 seats against the Congress's six in 2024, and its leadership regards a 150-seat demand as arithmetic without organisational evidence.

The Congress's insistence rests on a reading of the 2024 result that is not entirely supported by the numbers. It won six Lok Sabha seats and has a limited assembly footprint in a state where the SP's Yadav base and the BSP's Dalit base have historically out-organised it. The Congress does bring upper-caste and Muslim voters in certain pockets that the SP needs to convert close contests. Refusing to concede those seats could cost the alliance fringe seats that decided the 2024 Lok Sabha outcome.

"Just as the BJP appears to be fighting from the outside but is united internally with its allies, something similar is happening between the SP and the Congress they may appear to be saying different things publicly, but internally, the two parties are together," Akhilesh Yadav said recently.

Public distance, private accommodation

The DMK offered a sharp reading of the no-show. Spokesperson TKS Elangovan blamed the Congress, arguing that many INDIA bloc partners do not feel compelled to attend meetings because ideological unity against the BJP already exists.

"Many of the parties there do not want to go with Congress, but ideologically, they are united. They share the same view and will oppose the BJP. Therefore, they do not need to attend an INDIA bloc meeting because every party knows the issues and is in line with the Congress."

That explanation sounds generous, but it also concedes that the bloc's mechanics are weaker than its rhetoric. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK's supremacy within its alliance is accepted and the Congress contests a small, defined number of seats. In Uttar Pradesh, neither party has conceded senior-partner status. The SP believes its 37 Lok Sabha seats make it the natural leader; the Congress believes its national brand and upper-caste reach justify 150 assembly seats. That unresolved hierarchy is the root of the current absence, and it will not be fixed by a single meeting.

The Rajya Sabha wildcard

The seat-sharing dispute is not the only bargaining table. On 16 October, Rajya Sabha elections will be held for 10 Uttar Pradesh seats falling vacant. Eight of those are currently held by the BJP, one by the SP and one by the BSP. The SP may field three candidates even though its current assembly strength can secure victory for only two, signalling both ambition and a willingness to test cross-voting and tacit arrangements.

The candidate list adds another layer. The SP has named Dhanraj Nathwani, a senior Reliance Industries executive, as one of its picks, a choice that LiveMint profiled as a surprise pick. Nathwani is Group President at the Mukesh Ambani-led conglomerate and a director at Reliance New Energy Ltd and Reliance Projects & Property Management Services Ltd, according to his LinkedIn profile. The selection suggests the SP is reaching beyond its traditional political base, although it does not resolve the alliance arithmetic with the Congress.

What a frayed opposition means for 2027

Uttar Pradesh has long been the hinge of Indian coalition politics. The state sends the largest single bloc of MPs to the Lok Sabha, and a fragmented opposition there changes the national opposition's negotiating position inside Parliament. If the SP and Congress cannot hold a coordinated line before the 2027 assembly election, the BJP's task in the state becomes easier not because the BJP has grown stronger, but because the anti-incumbency vote splits.

There is a historical pattern in Indian federal politics where alliance partners keep public distance while maintaining private channels. Akhilesh Yadav's own comparison of the SP-Congress arrangement to the BJP's outwardly combative but internally unified alliance style suggests he believes the public friction is manageable. The risk is that unresolved seat-sharing now turns a tactical absence into a structural fracture. A structured, time-bound negotiation for the Rajya Sabha seats and then for the assembly would contain the damage. Without it, every skipped meeting becomes a story in itself, and the alliance's script is written by reporters rather than strategists.

The next test is not the next INDIA bloc meeting; it is 16 October. If the SP fields three candidates and wins two with outside support, the alliance can claim coordination despite the public noise. If it loses the third or if seat-sharing talks remain frozen into October, the 2027 Uttar Pradesh contest may open with a divided opposition. For Indian voters, that is a question of whether the largest state's political market will offer a genuinely competitive contest or a foregone conclusion.