A visibly surprised Samajwadi Party welcomed the victory of Congress in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and is now readying itself to accommodate the resurgent grand old party in the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party truck to contest 80 Lok Sabha seats of UP in the 2019 parliamentary elections.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had skipped the mega Opposition meet in Delhi on Monday, where top opposition party leaders met to work out a mechanism for stitching a grand alliance to take on the BJP in the 2019 polls.
After the success of Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal in three Lok Sabha and one Assembly bypolls in UP, the SP and BSP had distanced themselves from the Congress and had expressed reluctance in accommodating the grand old party in the alliance.
During poll campaigns in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, Akhilesh had adopted a strident anti-Congress posture, terming the Congress and the BJP as two sides of the same coin.