Akhilesh Yadav PDA+B Formula: After getting a spectacular victory in the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav is busy expanding his base. In this direction, he made another masterstroke on Sunday. He decided to make senior Samajwadi leader Mata Prasad Pandey the leader of the opposition in the assembly. This post was given to SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. (Akhilesh Yadav) The seat has fallen vacant due to resignation of Mata Prasad from the assembly after he was elected as an MP. Mata Prasad belongs to the Brahmin community and is 82 years old. On Sunday, a day before the assembly session began on Monday, Akhilesh Yadav wrote a letter to the Assembly Speaker Satish Mahana, in which Mata Prasad Pandey was named. (Mata Prasad Pandey) requested to be made the leader of the opposition.
Along with this, Akhilesh Yadav has appointed Mehboob Ali as the presiding officer, Kamal Akhtar as the chief whip and Rakesh Kumar alias RK Verma as the deputy whip in the assembly. Before the Lok Sabha elections, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav was playing the role of Leader of Opposition in the UP Assembly. He resigned from the Karhal assembly seat (of Mainpuri district) after being elected as a Lok Sabha member from Kannauj parliamentary constituency.
Seven-time MLA
Mata Prasad is an MLA from Itwa seat of Siddharth Nagar district. Pandey, who comes from Brahmin community, has been the Speaker of Uttar Pradesh Assembly twice and is an MLA for the seventh time. Pandey became MLA for the first time in 1980 and then in 1985 and 1989. After this, Pandey managed to win consecutive elections in 2002, 2007 and 2012.
Although he was defeated in the year 2017, he was again elected MLA from Itwa in 2022. Pandey was the Minister of Medical and Health and Family Welfare in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s cabinet between 1990-1991. He was again made a minister in Mulayam’s government between 2002-2004 and was given charge of the Ministry of Labor and Employment. Pandey first became the Speaker of the UP Legislative Assembly between 2004-2007 and again held this post between 2012-17.
Mehboob Ali-Amroha, Chief Whip Kamal Akhtar-Kanth of Moradabad district and Whip RK Verma is a Samajwadi Party MLA from Raniganj assembly constituency of Pratapgarh district. Earlier, Manoj Pandey, SP MLA from Unchahar of Rae Bareli district, who was the chief whip in the assembly, had resigned from the post of chief whip during the Rajya Sabha elections. Recently, SP chief Yadav had accused him of helping the BJP and requested the Assembly Speaker to cancel his membership.
Akhilesh’s PDA+B formula
In the Lok Sabha elections, Akhilesh Yadav had adopted the PDA formula. PDA means backward, Dalit and minority. He also kept this formula in mind while distributing tickets. Through this formula, he wanted to break the image of SP being a ‘party of the Yadav community’. You can guess this from the fact that in the last Lok Sabha elections, SP had fielded its candidates on 63 Lok Sabha seats in UP. Out of these, they gave tickets to leaders of the Yadav community on only five seats. These five seats are also within the Akhilesh Yadav family. Akhilesh Yadav himself was in the fray from Kannauj and Dimple Yadav from Mainpuri. Most of these seats were given to candidates from non-Yadav backward castes. Then he fielded Brahmin candidate Sanatan Pandey from Ballia. Sanatan Pandey also won.
Eye on Brahmin voters
By making Mata Prasad the leader of the opposition, Akhilesh Yadav is hitting multiple targets with one arrow. At present, BJP’s Chief Minister of UP, Yogi Adityanath, comes from the Rajput community. Among the upper castes in the state, both the Rajput and Brahmin communities have been politically very influential. Their number is also good in the population. Usually, both these influential castes are not comfortable together. In such a situation, such news comes repeatedly in the media that the Brahmin community is not happy with Yogi. The BJP leadership also understands the influence and importance of the Brahmin community in the state. In such a situation, it has given one post of Deputy Chief Minister in the state to Brahmin leader Brajesh Pathak. But, there are reports that Brajesh Pathak also does not have very good relations with CM Yogi. In such a situation, to turn this resentment of the Brahmin community to his side to some extent, Akhilesh Yadav has given this important post to Mata Prasad Pandey.
Distance from Yadav community
After the victory in the Lok Sabha elections, Akhilesh Yadav has become the unanimously accepted leader of SP. There were speculations that when Akhilesh leaves the post of Leader of Opposition in the House, he will give this post to his uncle Shivpal Yadav. But, he did not do so. If he had done so, he would have once again been accused of being a Yadav and family lover. Also, Akhilesh does not want to let any such power center be formed in SP which can create problems for him. In fact, when Akhilesh was the Chief Minister of the state from 2012 to 2017, he had to face a challenge from this very thing. It is said that when Akhilesh was the CM, there used to be five super CMs in his government. Due to this, Akhilesh failed to take his development works to the public and could not establish his effective control over the administration. Now Akhilesh does not want to repeat that mistake.
Tags: Akhilesh Yadav, Samajwadi Party
FIRST PUBLISHED : July 28, 2024, 18:30 IST