# Akhilesh Yadav says SP’s PDA plank now extends to Brahmins 2026-08-05T22:52:18+00:00 | India | Indian Opinion Desk Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said on 5 August that his party's PDA plank, standing for Pichhda, Dalit and Alpsankhyak (Backwards, Dalits and minorities), now extends to Pandits or Brahmins as well. The Hindu reported that Yadav made the remarks while addressing a Brahmin and intellectuals' conference at the party's Lucknow headquarters, held on the birth anniversary of socialist leader Janeshwar Mishra, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election due early next year. He said the BJP had tried to redefine PDA ever since losing to it, and argued the ruling party was now targeting Brahmins the way it had earlier targeted Samajwadi Party workers. Yadav pointed to Swami Avimukteshwaranand being stopped from taking a holy dip at the Kumbh and facing what he called a false POCSO case, and accused the BJP of embezzling Ram Temple donations. Lucknow-based analyst Asad Rizvi said the outreach targeted a Brahmin vote share, over nine percent of the population, that has traditionally favoured the BJP. ## Indian Opinion Analysis Extending PDA to cover Brahmins is the SP's own claim about its coalition, made at a party event ahead of a poll due early next year, but the specific charges Yadav levelled, over Avimukteshwaranand's Kumbh dip, the POCSO case and the Ram Temple donations, are accusations he alone is making, and nothing in the report corroborates them independently. Rizvi reads the move as a bid for a sizeable bloc that has historically leaned BJP, a judgement about strategy, not a projection of the result. Only the state's Assembly election, due early next year, will show whether that bloc actually moves toward the SP. ## Coverage - The Hindu Tags: Akhilesh Yadav, Samajwadi Party Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/pda-includes-pandits-says-akhilesh-in-sp-bid-to-woo-brahmins-in-uttar-pradesh/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/pda-includes-pandits-says-akhilesh-in-sp-bid-to-woo-brahmins-in-uttar-pradesh/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes.