Akhilesh Yadav has prepared a secret list of 150 candidates, there will be a big blast in July!

The political temperature has already started rising in Uttar Pradesh regarding the assembly elections to be held next year. The era of manipulations and strategies continues from Delhi to Lucknow. In this series, Samajwadi Party (SP) has geared up for the electoral battle of 2027. It is reported that SP under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav has prepared a preliminary list of possible candidates for about 150 assembly seats in 30 districts of the state. This time the party does not want to delay the ticket distribution at any cost, hence it is believed that the entire work of screening the candidates will be completed by the second week of July.

In fact, this time also the entire responsibility of ticket distribution of Samajwadi Party rests on their most trusted ‘PDA’ (Backward, Dalit, Minority) formula. After the bumper success in the Lok Sabha elections 2024, Akhilesh Yadav has understood very well that this formula holds the key to power in Uttar Pradesh. This is the reason why this time the party is mainly adopting only two criteria in the selection of candidates – first, the leader should be from PDA caste and second, he should have strong winnability.

Abandoned from the old ‘MY’ equation, now rely solely on PDA

There was a discussion for a long time in the political circles of UP whether SP will return to its old and traditional ‘Muslim-Yadav’ (MY) equation in the upcoming assembly elections or will it repeat the 2024 experiment? But looking at the current stance of SP, the picture has now become completely clear. Party insiders say that Akhilesh Yadav is in no mood to return to the old ways. Like the Lok Sabha elections, this new ‘PDA’ model of social engineering will be the main weapon of SP in the Assembly elections too.

The strategy is so aggressive that this time also SP will not shy away from fielding Dalit candidates on general i.e. unreserved seats. In the last elections, the party had surprised everyone by fielding Scheduled Caste candidates on general seats, and the result was also in their favor. However, some party leaders believe that it is too early to finalize any name as a lot of brainstorming is yet to happen at the grassroots level.

Tickets are being decided not in closed rooms, but in ‘open house’

This time, SP has adopted exactly the same method for shortlisting the candidates, which it had used during the 2024 general elections. District-wise meetings are being called and these meetings are not like secret diplomacy in a closed room, but like an ‘open house’ session.

Actually, in this process, the ticket contenders and all the district unit officials sit together in front of the national president Akhilesh Yadav and his core group. There is no curtain of any kind there. The candidate seeking ticket has to tell in front of everyone what roadmap he has for victory. On the other hand, the officials of the district unit also openly assess the ground hold and weakness of that candidate in front of everyone. This face-to-face interaction is making the screening of parachute candidates much easier.

Social participation is necessary with guarantee of victory

This time the party strategists seem to be very serious about giving correct representation to the castes and communities in proportion to their population. Regarding this entire exercise, senior Samajwadi Party leader and former MLC Udayveer Singh says that the ability to win elections is certainly a very important aspect, but it cannot be considered the only parameter. An equally important condition for the selection of the candidate is that the candidate should be in accordance with the basic spirit of ‘PDA’ and should have good influence in his/her society.

It is clear that Samajwadi Party is preparing to reveal more than half of its cards by the month of July. If everything goes as per plan, then by the end of monsoon, the first official list of SP candidates will be before the public.