Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is leaving no stone unturned to keep the BJP on the tenterhook ahead of the upcoming Assembly bypolls. While Congress was leading the INDIA bloc, Yadav stuck to his PDA ideology – Pichhda, Dalits and Alpsankhyak (Backwards, Dalits, and Minorities) and led his party to a stunning victory against the BJP in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. After the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP scrambled to put together the missing pieces aiming to stage a comeback in the upcoming assembly bypolls for 10 seats.
After acing the PDA formula, Akhilesh Yadav has played another social engineering masterstroke aiming to lure the Brahmin voters who have been voting for the BJP and have played a crucial role in making Yogi Adityanath the Chief Minister for the second time. Uttar Pradesh has 12% Brahmins who mostly vote for the BJP. However, Akhilesh Yadav is well aware that the majority mark in the 2027 assembly polls cannot be acquired without the support from the upper castes including the Brahmins. Thus, Yadav played the ‘BAP’ – ‘Brahmin, Alpsankhyak and Pichhda’ – card which will echo in the Uttar Pradesh assembly challenging Yogi Adityanath’s might for the next three years until the 2027 assembly elections.
Akhilesh Yadav appointed seasoned politician Mata Prasad Pandey as the Leader of the Opposition, thus indicating that his party is not averse to Brahmins. This shows that the Samajwadi Party is now focusing on caste equations to win the polls rather than focusing on the Yadavs and Muslims alone. This was evident in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls where the Samajwadi Party fielded only four Muslims and five Yadavs of the 62 Lok Sabha seats it contested.
The SP also appointed Kamaal Akhtar as the chief whip and Rakesh Kumar alias R K Verma as the deputy whip in the assembly. By making these appointments, Akhilesh Yadav played the ‘Brahmin, Alpsankhyak and Pichhda’ (BAP) card, thus sending a signal to the 12% vote bank that they are being keenly watched by the Samajwadi Party.
Who Is Mata Prasad Pandey?
Mata Prasad Pandey is a seven-time MLA of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. Pandey, 82, replaces SP president Akhilesh Yadav, who resigned as MLA from Karhal seat in Mainpuri district after he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj. Pandey, a Brahmin leader, has held the post of Uttar Pradesh Assembly speaker twice — 2004-2007 and 2012-2017. He was first elected as MLA in 1980 and then in 1985 and 1989. He served as state health minister between 1990 and 1991 in the then-chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government. He was the labour and employment minister in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government between 2002 and 2004.