After Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday struck a blow to the prospects of a 'mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance) of opposition parties for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by launching a fierce attack on Congress, hinting that if the grand old party restricted the success of samajwadis, the SP would break the friendship.

Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday campaigned in Madhya Pradesh.

"I want to tell the Congress that when they will be the weakest, the Samajwadi Party will be their dearest friend. But the Congress leaders don't want 'cycle' to succeed. Hence, we have decided that if you try to stop the 'cycle', we will take your hands off the cycle and give the control to some other party," Yadav said at a rally at Damoh in Madhya Pradesh.

Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress are two sides of the same coin. Both the parties are responsible for the loot of public sector banks by big business and industrial houses. These two parties are behind the Rafale scam — first the Congress played the tricks and now the BJP is exploiting it for its narrow political gains," Akhilesh charged.

Cycle is the political symbol of Samajwadi Party.

Akhilesh dropped strong hints that his party may not ally with the Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, saying this would deal a huge blow to the Rahul Gandhi-led party as they had been rallying for a grand coalition to stop the BJP juggernaut in the country.

Apparently miffed with the Congress for refusing to share seats with SP and BSP in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, Akhilesh had on Saturday attacked the Congress while campaigning in Chhattisgarh. He had accused the grand old party of scuttling Samajwadi Party's prospects in the poll-bound state.

Hinting that SP might not enter into a tie-up with Congress for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Yadav said, "Humne bhi tay kar liya hai ki cycle ko rokoge to aapka haath handle se hata diya jayega... Control aur kisi ke haath chala jaayega (We have decided we will remove your hands from the cycle handle if you try to stop the cycle and the control will go in the hand of someone else)."

Without directly taking the name of any political party, the SP chief used their symbols (hand of the Congress and cycle of SP) to hint at the growing rift between the two parties.

Yadav's statement came during a rally in Durg in Madhya Pradesh while campaigning for SP and its alliance partner Gondwana Gantantra Party.

The former Chief Minister had earlier also slammed the Congress for wasting time in "calculations" in the poll-bound states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. "When the alliance did not happen, we went with GGP... It is difficult to understand what the Congress is calculating and trying to do, but one thing becomes obvious... they want to stop SP from surging ahead," he had said.

Akhilesh said that there was no difference in the policies of the BJP and Congress. His anti-Congress statements come barely 20 months after the two parties entered into an alliance for UP assembly elections in March 2017. The SP leadership had then said that the 'cycle' would run even faster with the 'hand' to help in the ride but the alliance failed as the BJP swept the polls.