With the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly election about five months away, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is taking his PDA (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) strategy into campaign mode and will travel in the party’s newly prepared PDA ‘rath’ from Bachhrawan to Rae Bareli on September 24 amid a political row over a recent college clash.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s journey will be an early public mobilisation exercise. (HT FILE PHOTO)
It will be his first such road journey this poll season.
The journey, prompted by the September 17 confrontation at Feroze Gandhi Degree College and the subsequent face-off between SP workers and police, gives the party an early platform to project its backward-class, Dalit and minority social-coalition narrative on the ground.
Yadav will proceed to the residence of Harchandpur MLA Rahul Lodhi, who was allegedly manhandled during the protests. Police have denied the allegation.
The SP chief has described it as an “attack on PDA” and accused the state government of allowing “casteism” in administration. The police have rejected the allegations and said their intervention was aimed at maintaining law and order.
The choice of Bachhrawan as the starting point and Rae Bareli as the destination also gives the programme a local social-coalition context. Lodhi represents Harchandpur, while Bachhrawan MLA Shyam Sundar Bharti, who joined the protest after the clash, is a Pasi leader.
Political reports have linked the programme to the SP’s broader outreach among these communities, though the party has not officially described the visit in those terms.
The SP has announced a wider PDA Rath campaign for the run-up to the 2027 polls. The September 24 journey thus provides an early public mobilisation exercise, combining support for party legislators with the projection of the PDA narrative ahead of the formal campaign.
