Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday appealed to the voters of Uttar Pradesh and especially the ‘PDA watchdogs’ to remain alert and ensure that no conspiracy to wipe out the votes of the PDA community succeeds.
Yadav coined the acronym PDA in June 2023, which stands for ‘backward’, Dalit and ‘minority’.
In a post on X, he said that despite the efforts of ‘PDA watchdogs’, crores of votes from the PDA community have already been deleted. He called upon party workers to conduct thorough verification at each booth and pledged that “not a single vote should be cancelled, not a single vote should be reduced”.
SP has appointed “PDA sentinels” in all the districts to ensure that PDA votes remain intact in the voter list. Yadav said voters should be made aware of the importance of registering their names in the voter list and warned that failure to register their names could lead to misuse in future.
He said the BJP government could bring “draconian laws” to deprive citizens of various rights and entitlements on the basis of voter lists.
Yadav claimed that deletion of names from voter lists could be used to question citizens’ access to ration cards, government schemes, caste certificates, reservations, bank accounts, property records, PAN cards, Ayushman cards, essential supplies and even ownership of land and houses.
He said, “Consider your name in the voter list as proof of your citizenship. Consider your voter ID card as your citizen identity card.”
He alleged that the “land-grabbing BJP government” could make laws to snatch away people’s rights, money and property.
Accusing the BJP of election manipulation, Yadav said that a party which can conduct elections unopposed can go to any extent, including deletion of votes, to win the elections.
He also alleged that corruption and capture of water, forests and land were part of the BJP’s hidden agenda.
The SP chief urged PDA community members to take his message as a warning. He appealed to them to register their votes, protect their citizenship and vote against the BJP to form a “PDA government”.
He further said that protecting one’s vote also means protecting the Constitution, reservations and jobs, and warned that in the end it is the poor, the exploited and the marginalized who suffer the most.
“Cast your vote, save your future,” Yadav said in his post.