PoliticsUttar Pradesh 2027
Lucknow poster war: SP courts Brahmins and Kevats as Congress stakes claim to 200 seats
Two posters went up outside two party offices in Lucknow on Sunday. One shows Akhilesh Yadav on a boat; the other tells the Samajwadi Party what its INDIA bloc partner wants for 2027.
Key points
- An SP poster shows Akhilesh Yadav on a boat with the line that Brahmins will show the way and Kevats will ferry us across.
- Outside the state Congress office, posters declare '200 seat haq hai hamara' (200 seats are our right).
- The UP Assembly has 403 seats, so the Congress demand amounts to roughly half.
Uttar Pradesh’s 2027 contest played out on the walls of Lucknow on Sunday, with two INDIA bloc partners using posters to send messages, one to voters and one to each other.
Outside the Samajwadi Party headquarters, a new poster shows party chief Akhilesh Yadav standing on a boat. Its Hindi line promises that Brahmins will show the way, Kevats will ferry the party across, and together they will form a “PDA” government. The boat recalls the Ramayana’s boatman, Kevat, who carried Ram across the river, and the line reaches out to Kevat and Nishad voters as well as to Brahmins. PDA, the SP’s shorthand for its backward, Dalit and minority base, now appears to be stretched to take in aggrieved Brahmins too.
Outside the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee office, posters carrying photographs of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra read “200 seat haq hai hamara”, or “200 seats are our right”. That is close to half of the 403-member Assembly. Congress is reported to have given the SP a list of 200 constituencies it wants, drawn up by grading seats on how far its organisation has grown, and to want seat-sharing talks wrapped up by mid-November.
The posters are a sharp signal to Mr Yadav. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election the SP won 37 of the state’s seats and Congress six, though Congress led in 38 Assembly segments and came second in 42.
Neither party had commented on the posters by Sunday afternoon. Mr Yadav has insisted the alliance is solid. “We are all united to form the government in 2027,” he said on Thursday, predicting that the BJP “is going to be wiped out from Uttar Pradesh”.
The SP’s own wall campaign has drawn fire. Hoardings that appeared at Lucknow’s National PG College crossing on Friday showed Mr Yadav in a prayer cap beside Atiq Ahmed, Mukhtar Ansari and Azam Khan, after his visit to Azam Khan in Rampur jail. Who put them up is not known.