Akhilesh’s PDA formula vs BJP’s OBC bid: Breaking down the Uttar Pradesh by-elections

The banner outside the election office of Mithlesh Pal, a candidate in the Meerapur assembly in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district, featured some unusual faces. Besides the faces of the leaders of Pal’s party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, and those of the Bharatiya Janata Party, its alliance partner, the banner featured other icons and leaders—BR Ambedkar; the poet Valmiki; Vishwakarma, the architect of the world in Hindu mythology; Jyotiba Phule, the anti-caste social reformer; among others. Pal hails from the Gadariya community, which is classified among the thousands of non-dominant castes among the Other Backward Classes that are collectively referred to as the Extremely Backward Classes. Her banner was honouring the icons of EBC communities such as hers.

Pal’s choice of icons was also an indication of the BJP’s strategy to woo the EBCs, which form the largest voting bloc in the state. Starting in 2017, the party had begun focussing on gaining traction among OBCs, bringing in candidates from EBC groups and honouring their icons or gods. This approach had yielded massive dividends in the 2017 and 2022 assembly elections as well as in the 2019 general election, even though key posts, and power, remained with upper-castes. But in the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year, the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s “PDA” strategy—referring to “Piccdhe,” or backward classes, Dalits, and “Alpsankhayak,” or minorities, dented the BJP’s hold. The PDA formula had led the SP to its largest-ever haul of 37 seats in the Lok Sabha. Of the 37 MPs that the SP sent to the Lok Sabha in June, 25 were from OBC communities.

Meerapur is one of the assemblies of Uttar Pradesh to go to by-elections on 20 November. Ninety candidates are contesting, across nine assemblies: Katehari in the Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha constituency, Majhawan in Mirzapur, Meerapur in Bijnor, Sisamau in Kanpur City, Karhal in Mainpuri, Khair in Aligarh, Kundarki in Moradabad, and Phulpur as well as Ghaziabad assembly, in Lok Sabha constituencies of the same names. Eight of these seats fell vacant after the MLAs were elected as MPs in the Lok Sabha elections, while the Sisamau seat became vacant after the Samajwadi Party MLA, Irfan Solanki, was convicted in a criminal case.

Halfway into the second term of the Adityanath government in the state, and following a loss of face for the BJP there in the recent Lok Sabha election, all parties are viewing these by-polls as crucial to building momentum for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, to be held in 2027. The by-elections are a litmus test of Adityanath’s leadership, which was called into question after the BJP’s dismal performance in the general election. But they are also a test of the BJP’s overtures to the EBCs against Akhilesh’s PDA formula, which has stayed in place in the by-polls.