They are likely to announce the alliance at a joint press conference in Lucknow on Thursday. Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) arrived in Lucknow on Wednesday ahead of an expected announcement of an alliance with Chandrashekhar Azad’s Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) for the 2027 assembly elections due by February.
The two parties have finalised the deal after several rounds of meetings, sources told NDTV.
Neither party has won an assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh. Two years later, Azad won the Nagina Lok Sabha seat, giving his party its first elected representative. The partnership brings together a party that seeks to represent Muslims and one that is trying to build a Dalit political base. Together they are attempting to create an alternative formation outside the ruling BJP-led NDA and the Samajwadi Party-led opposition. “I don’t know in what dream Akhilesh Yadav is living.
As far as I can see, this SP-Congress alliance is the same alliance that fought the 2017 Uttar Pradesh election, and the result will be the same,” Ali added, when asked about a wider alliance. He cited the 2025 Bihar assembly elections, in which the BJP-JDU alliance (NDA) retained power while the RJD and Congress did not ally with Hyderabad-headquartered Owaisi’s AIMIM. In 2022, the AIMIM contested over 90 seats and polled less than half a per cent of the vote. The ASP fielded over 100 candidates and polled 0.13 per cent. Azad contested Gorakhpur Urban against Yogi Adityanath and polled fewer than 8,000 votes, forfeiting his deposit.
UP AIMIM president Shaukat Ali said the party turned to Azad after it was rebuffed by the main opposition parties, naming the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, besides Mayawati’s BSP, which has its core base among Dalits. “We have always wanted a strong alliance to be formed so that the BJP does not come to power in Uttar Pradesh for a third term,” he said. “Muslims have suffered the most under the BJP government,” Ali alleged. Akhilesh Yadav was asked about the alliance, to which he said, “The people of Uttar Pradesh have already made up their minds in favour of the Samajwadi Party.
