Decode Politics: How Akhilesh’s PDA plank powered SP surge in UP, dealt a blow to BJP

The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) has fuelled the Opposition INDIA bloc’s surge in Uttar Pradesh, ensuring a setback for the ruling BJP.

Belying various projections, the SP has emerged as a formidable challenger to the BJP as they are locked in a neck-and-neck race. As per the initial trends, the INDIA bloc, including the Congress, has managed to edge out the BJP in the crucial heartland state.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the SP had managed to win just 5 seats in UP as it had then contested 37 out of the state’s 80 seats as part of an alliance with the BSP. The BJP had then swept the polls, bagging 62 seats, with the BSP getting 10.

This time, the SP contested 62 seats while its INDIA partner Congress fought from 17 constituencies.

Confident of retaining its core Muslim-Yadav voter base and seeking to make inroads into the votes of non-Yadav OBCs, who were seen to be consolidated in favour of the BJP, the SP fielded only five candidates from the Yadav community in its 62 seats.

Incidentally, all five are from party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family.

In 2019, the SP fielded 10 Yadav faces out of 37 candidates. In 2014, it contested 78 seats and nominated 12 Yadav candidates, including four from the “first family”, that is Mulayam’s clan.

“The Muslims and Yadavs are firmly behind us. The party’s vote share increased when it joined hands with smaller parties, who draw the support of non-Yadav OBCs. The party has accommodated candidates from other communities to reach out to voters of other OBC groups and upper castes,” an SP leader said.

Akhilesh, in fact, coined a new slogan for the vote base he banked on this time, expanding from “M-Y” or Muslim-Yadav to “PDA” or “Pichde (backward classes or OBCs), Dalits,