Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Friday said that the Samajwadi Party was open to a tie-up with the Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, with Mulayam Singh as its prime ministerial candidate and Rahul Gandhi as his deputy. Akhilesh Yadav was answering a question posed at the HT Leadership Summit, when he said that the Bharatiya Janata Party would have “no vacancy” in its candidate for PM, and that he would be happy with an SP-Congress alliance for either the state polls in 2017 or Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who was present at the event, did not respond to Yadav’s remarks. Yadav also said that there was no chance of his party teaming up with the BJP, and that the Congress and SP were “old friends”. Yadav had earlier suggested a Grand Alliance in Uttar Pradesh, similar to the alliance that won the Bihar polls, but got no response from either the Congress or Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party on the matter. Yadav then retracted his statement.