Lucknow, April 10 (IANS): Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav, along with Opposition INDIA bloc ally Congress, will start campaigning for the SP candidates from Pilibhit Lok Sabha constituency on April 12.

Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi or Priyanka Gandhi, are likely to attend the rally in which the supporters of both the parties will be seen together.

As per the seat-sharing pact, the SP is contesting 62 seats in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is contesting 17 seats while the Trinamool Congress has been given one seat.

After Pilibhit, Akhilesh is scheduled to address rallies in Nagina and Bijnor.

"There will be a maha rally of SP-Congress as part of the INDIA bloc," said a senior SP leader.

Pilibhit is going to the polls in the first phase on April 19 and Akhilesh is launching the campaign from this seat that the SP has never won.

Akhilesh, as part of a strategy, is starting his campaign from the seat that the SP has never won even as the ruling BJP denied ticket to the sitting BJP MP Varun Gandhi from there.

Bhagwat Saran Gangwar is the SP candidate on the seat while the BJP has fielded Uttar Pradesh Minister Jitin Prasada.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a rally in Pilibhit wherein he targeted the Samajwadi Party and the Congress.

Besides Pilibhit, seven other constituencies namely Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Nagina, Moradabad and Rampur will go to the polls on April 19.