Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said that the Opposition INDIA bloc will contest the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls together, The Hindu reported.

“INDIA bloc is intact and we are firmly with it,” the newspaper quoted Yadav as saying. “The alliance will contest the elections together.”

The former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh was responding to a question about Congress MP Imran Masood’s comments from May.

Masood had told The Indian Express that the Congress is “facing harm because of the alliance [with the Samajwadi Party]”.

The Saharanpur MP had called for a revised seat-sharing arrangement between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress. He added that the “80-17 formula” would not work in the 2027 state polls, the newspaper reported.

“We are not worried about any such statement,” PTI quoted Yadav as saying. “Whoever wants to leave can leave the INDIA bloc.”

The “80-17 formula” refers to the 2024 Lok Sabha election seat-sharing deal where the Congress contested 17 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 parliamentary seats, with the Samajwadi Party nominating candidates for the rest.

Both parties are key partners in the INDIA bloc, formed ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to challenge the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Samajwadi Party and the Congress alliance won 43 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh in the general elections.

While the Samajwadi Party emerged as the single-largest party in Uttar Pradesh with 37 seats, the Congress won six seats.

The BJP won in 33 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, down from the 62 parliamentary seats it had won there in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The Hindutva party’s vote share in Uttar Pradesh also fell to 41.3% from the all-time high of 49.9% in 2019.