Lucknow: Adding a new shade to Samajwadi Party’s pitch for PDA, party president Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday described the ‘D’ part of the acronym as ‘Damdar (assertive) Dalit’ who have joined hands “to oust the BJP responsible for systematic targeting of community during the last 10 years”.Akhilesh was addressing a Dalit ‘Mahasammelan’, a mega conference in Agra on Sunday, when he described the turnout as nothing short of a national-level convention of the Dalit community.SP’s PDA pitch – comprising Pichhde (Backward classes), Dalits and Alpsankhyak (minorities) – has yielded electoral dividends in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the party plans to work on the idea more aggressively in the 2027 assembly polls in UP.Listing the way the BJP had targeted the Dalit community in ways more than one, the SP chief said around 200 statues of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar had been vandalised during the decade-long tenure of the BJP govt and no action was taken against the accused.Akhilesh blamed the BJP govt for orchestrating paper leaks in recruitment exams to deny reservation opportunities to the community and others entitled to reservation provided by Ambedkar’s Constitution. “The closure of 26,000 govt primary schools has hit the PDA community the most,” he said.“This was a Dalit conference of western UP, but the turnout makes it appear like a national-level Dalit conference. The ‘D’ in PDA has now become ‘damdar Dalit’,” Akhilesh said. He credited party MP Ramji Lal Suman for the success of the event.Hitting out at the BJP for describing Agra as their ‘stronghold’, Akhilesh said the saffron party would soon lose their foothold in the region and beyond.“This time, the Dalit community will defeat the BJP,” he said and added that the 2027 polls would be a choice between laptop and lathi.“Lathi will lose and laptop will win the assembly polls,” Akhilesh said, suggesting that once voted in to oust BJP in the 2027 polls, the SP govt will resume free distribution of laptops to students. During its 2012-17 stint, the SP govt claims to have given away 15 lakh laptops.He questioned BJP’s criticism of his decision to visit Ram temple in Ayodhya, stating that it was the BJP govt that extended him the invitation. “The BJP is in panic mode because it has understood that the PDA community has learnt to win elections by the power of votes,” Akhilesh said.Questioning the claims of chief minister Yogi Adityanath that names of 1.27 crore Hindu voters have been deleted from electoral rolls, Akhilesh said how it was possible when the BJP was in govt and had handpicked the officials and administrative machinery.Akhilesh said the alert Dalit community got its names included in the voters list and the Muslims managed to save their names from being deleted. He cautioned PDA communities against further attempts to distort electoral rolls. “If we cannot save our vote, we will not be able to save our Constitution,” Akhilesh said.
