’UP ke do ladke’ will make India’s politics....: Rahul Gandhi to Akhilesh Yadav after Lok Sabha polls 2024

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday signaled his camaraderie with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav by saying ‘UP ke do ladke’ will change the Indian politics into one what is about above.

Responding to Yadav's greeting on his 54th birthday, Gandhi inculcated the "mohabbat ki dukaan" tagline from his pan-India yatras and the Lok Sabha election campaign.

"UP ke do ladke Hindustan ki rajneeti ko mohabbat ki dukaan banayenge -- khata-khat, khata-khat (loosely translating to two boys of Uttar Pradesh will make India's politics all about love)" Gandhi said.

‘UP ke do ladke’ tagline

First coined during the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, "UP ke do ladke" was a tagline used to underline the coming together of Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi as an alliance. However, the alliance did not do well at the time.

In the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also taken a dig at duo using the same tagline.

Without naming Gandhi and Yadav, Modi had said, "You might remember here in Uttar Pradesh that the film featuring two boys ('do ladke'), which had flopped last time, the film of the two boys has been re-released by these people."

Congress - Samajwadi Party alliance

Speculations are that the Congress and the Samajwadi Party are contemplating to continue the alliance in the bypolls and even later.

With 37 out of 80, the Samajwadi Party won the highest numbers of seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, giving a record performance since its inception.

Its ally the Congress won six seats in the state while the BJP won 33.

The camaraderie between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party was evident on the ground, and the election results confirmed that the vote transfer between the two allies was successful.

Encouraged by the outcomes, the two parties have been emphasizing the INDIA bloc's collaboration in preventing the BJP from achieving a majority independently.

The BJP, with 240 seats, fell short of a majority in the Lok Sabha but the National Democratic Alliance secured the mandate with 293 seats. The Congress bagged 99 seats.

(With PTI inputs)