The Congress on Sunday said it was prepared to contest all the Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh on its own, a day after the two main heartland parties buried their decades-old rivalry to declare an alliance but kept the grand old party out.

Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad said his party was the only one that could topple the BJP at the Centre.

“The Congress is the only party which can dislodge the Narendra Modi government at the Centre in the forthcoming national elections. We are ready to contest in all the 80 constituencies of the heartland state with confidence and force,” Azad, his party’s in-charge for Uttar Pradesh, told reporters in Lucknow.

“We are going to surprise the people by defeating the BJP,” the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha added.

On Saturday, Bahujan Samaj Party boss Mayawati and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav had jointly announced that their parties would contest 38 seats each, leaving four — including Rae Bareli and Amethi, the parliamentary constituencies of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi — for others.

Asked what the Congress would do if Mayawati and Akhilesh — both former chief ministers — decided to enter the fray, Azad said: “It is not clear that Mayawati and Akhilesh would contest the Lok Sabha elections. We will think on this issue only when such a situation arises.”

Sources in Delhi said the Congress had no other option but to contest all the 80 seats after Saturday’s declaration, but would likely focus on 20-25 seats. In the remaining constituencies, they said, it was unlikely to put up a serious fight to avoid splitting anti-BJP votes.

Saturday’s declaration by Akhilesh and Mayawati formally ended all talk of a potential Congress-SP-BSP alliance that had come under strain last December, when Congress chief Rahul refused to share seats with the heartland parties in the state elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Azad avoided any comments on his party’s exclusion from the SP-BSP alliance and focused instead on attacking Modi.

“Modi asks what the Congress did in 70 years after Independence. All we can say is that the country struggled for freedom under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and achieved it…. We gave a secular Constitution to the country and worked for the balanced development of all sections, whereas the BJP destroyed the social fabric of India to grab political power,” Azad said.