Until the 2014 general elections, in which religious polarisation became more pronounced in deciding the poll outcome, caste and caste alone was the primary ingredient of electoral politics in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

So much so, that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had also constructed social coalitions alongside their main poll plank of Hindu and Hindutva for the polls. Interestingly, in the 1991 elections, when the BJP had garnered a clear majority in the UP assembly, the party leadership had got its caste calculus right even though the northern states, including UP, were caught in an unprecedented frenzy over the Ram temple campaign.

Caste will likely be back on the centerstage for the 2027 assembly elections as Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav, aggressively rides on his tested PDA (Pichda or backwards, Dalit and Alpsankhyak or minorities) formula.

In the 2024 general elections, he along with Congress scion Rahul Gandhi had succeeded in breaking the BJP’s Hindutva plank which, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma and pro-poor schemes, had won them four state assembly and Lok Sabha elections since 2014.

In fact, many political pundits had taken Akhilesh’s consistent reiteration of PDA lightly until it paid him huge dividends in 2024, propelling the party into prime position in the Lok Sabha.

As of now, a confident Akhilesh seems to be setting the agenda for the 2027 polls as the political narrative in the state is dominated by caste-oriented incidents -- humiliation of Yadav kathavachaks (narrator of holy scriptures) in Etawah, clash between Rajbhars and Karni Sena in Varanasi and the vandalisation of Dalit MP Ramji Lal Suman’s home in Agra, to mention a few. Such clashes have not only infuriated the lower castes and........

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