In UP, Akhilesh Yadav woos Brahmins to counter BJP

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 3

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On Sunday while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was praising Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for his tough stance against mafia and criminals while hitting out at BJP’s main rival Samajwadi Party in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, former CM Akhilesh Yadav was offering prayers to Lord Parshuram at a temple “constructed by Samajwadi leaders” in Lucknow.

The gesture is being seen as yet another attempt by the regional satrap to woo “around 10 to 12 per cent” Brahmin voters in the state.

Yadav was joined by a number of leaders from the community at the temple on the Purvanchal Expressway where hoardings reading “Brahmin ka sankalp, Akhilesh hi vikalp (Brahmin’s pledge, Akhilesh the only option)”, had been put up.

Yadav was also quoted as saying that if voted to power, his party will declare Parshuram Jayanti as a public holiday.

According to Samajwadi Party  leaders, “Brahmins are very happy with Akhilesh Yadav” though as per leaders from the BJP, which too has in place a counter strategy against Samajwadi Party’s ‘Brahmin’ outreach’, these are all “false assumptions”.

Meanwhile, observers believe the politically significant community, which otherwise has been favourable towards the BJP, is “weighing its options”.

The buzz is that senior BJP leaders from the community are “also not too happy over the treatment meted out to them by Adityanath in the past five years”.

The BJP’s committee aims at dispelling “all these falsehoods and confusion being spread among Brahmins by rivals SP and BSP that the saffron party is neglecting their community”.

Brahmins comprise a sizable percentage of votes and are also significant in terms of having influence beyond their actual numbers.

“In rural areas and villages, the panditji of the local temple is among the influencers,” the observers say.

As far as UP is concerned, Brahmins remained loyal to the Congress before the politics of mandir-mandal took over.

In the 2007 assembly elections they also majorly supported Mayawati’s BSP. However, somewhere around the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the arrival of Prime Minister Modi on the scene, the scale tilted towards the BJP. A vast majority, around 70 per cent of the community, are said to have voted for the saffron party in 2014.