The Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh is mired in confusion and, going by the public statements of Akhilesh Yadav and state Congress chief Ajay Rai, it’s all part of a clever “strategy”.

Except that a local Congress leader from Allahabad has shown that this strategy is not such a clever one, after all.

Suresh Yadav, president of the Congress’s Gangapar unit in Allahabad, who had on Friday filed his nomination for the Phulpur Assembly by-election, on Saturday said: “I am the official candidate of the INDIA bloc. There is no doubt about it.”

The problem is, Muztaba Siddiqui of the Samajwadi Party too has filed his nomination from the seat. “I am the official INDIA nominee,” Siddiqui claimed before reporters.

Akhilesh, the Samajwadi president, had two days ago declared his party would contest all the nine Assembly seats where elections are due on November 13 and that ally Congress would campaign for all the candidates.

But Suresh Yadav said: “There’s no such agreement. The Phulpur seat was given to the Congress. Our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, represented the Phulpur Lok Sabha seat in the 1952, 1957 and 1962 elections. We are emotionally connected to this place.”

Ignoring the fiasco in Phulpur, Akhilesh on Saturday said in Lucknow: “The SP-Congress alliance will continue and we will win the 2027 Assembly elections together. The INDIA bloc’s decision to give all the 10 Assembly seats (the by-election to the 10th seat will be delayed) to the SP is part of a strategy.But we won’t reveal the strategy to the BJP.”

Rai too said, without elaborating: “Initially, it was decided that the Congress would contest from five of the 10 vacant Assembly seats. But keeping in mind the anarchy unleashed by the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, our central leadership changed the strategy and gave all the seats to the SP. We’ll win all the 10 seats.”

He added: “We have asked our Phulpur leader to withdraw his nomination.”

Later in the day, the Congress suspended Suresh Yadav, who declared he would contest as an Independent.

As INDIA allies, the SP and the Congress had contested 63 and 17 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats and won 37 and 6 seats, respectively. The leaders of both parties claim the alliance is intact.

A Congress leader, speaking off the record, laughed away the talk of “strategy” by Akhilesh and Rai.

“There’s no strategy except the lethargy of our central leadership. The SP leaders didn’t campaign for our candidates during the Lok Sabha elections but our leader Rahul Gandhi campaigned for them,” he said.

“Contesting just 17 seats was shameful on the part of a national party, but Rahul had no time to look into it.”

The Congress leader said Rahul was now “busy in Wayanad”, from where his sister Priyanka Gandhi is contesting a Lok Sabha by-election.

“We were told at a meeting in Lucknow that Rahul was being largehearted towards Akhilesh and giving him all the seats here. But the fact is that we are in politics, and we’ll be nowhere if we don’t contest elections,” he said.

“Rahul’s complacency after winning just six seats in Uttar Pradesh is ridiculous. And by surrendering before the Samajwadis, he is turning us into a laughing stock. Phulpur is proof of that.”