Akhilesh Yadav has made Mata Prasad Pandey the Leader of Opposition in the UP Assembly.
Making Mata Prasad Pandey the Leader of Opposition in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly is seen as an attempt by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav to woo the Brahmin community. This is being said because for the first time in its political history, the SP has made a member of the upper caste community the Leader of the Opposition in the House. Thus, the SP did not want to limit its political base to the PDA (Backward-Dalit-Minority), but found it more appropriate to bet on a Brahmin leader to expand it. Due to this, Mata Prasad Pandey has been assigned the representation of SP MLAs in the Assembly.
Even though voices are being raised inside and outside the SP in support and opposition to making Mata Prasad Pandey the Leader of the Opposition and questions have been raised by BJP-BSP, but after this decision of Akhilesh, the discussion has also started whether Brahmins will intensify their political efforts. For mobilization of Brahmin voters and will Brahmin voters choose to leave BJP and join SP? Former BJP MLA Anand Shukla congratulated Mata Prasad Pandey by tweeting that everyone needs 15 percent Brahmin votes. At the same time, after BSP chief Mayawati’s reaction, Satish Chandra Mishra, considered the Brahmin face of the party, accused the SP government of neglecting the front and back and recalled the atrocities on the Brahmin community.
Brahmins were once the king in Uttar Pradesh politics, but now they have become kingmakers. Both politics and power in Uttar Pradesh remained confined around the Brahmin community for a long time. After independence, UP continued to be dominated by Brahmins until 1989 and six Brahmins became Chief Ministers. Govind Vallabh Pant, Sucheta Kripalani, Kamalapati Tripathi, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, Sripati Mishra and Narayan Dutt Tiwari were CMs in UP. All of them belonged to Congress. Among them, Narayan Dutt Tiwari has been the CM of UP three times.
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If we look at the tenure of the chief ministers of the Brahmin community, the arch of power in Uttar Pradesh has been in the hands of the Brahmin community for about 23 years. But, Mandal and Kamandal’s politics sidelined him. After Narayan Dutt Tiwari, no one from the Brahmin community could become the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. For the last three and a half decades, the Brahmin community has become a mere vote bank for political parties in the state. Even though no Brahmin has been king in UP since 1989, he is certainly playing the role of kingmaker.
Congress continued to dominate UP through the Brahmin, Dalit and Muslim equation, and Brahmins also became CMs during the same period. Mandal versus Kamandal politics removed both the Congress and the Brahmins from power. When Brahmins joined the BJP in the 1990s, they were tied to its political pillars less than the way the Yadavs were tied to the SP and the Dalits to the BSP. With the strengthening of the BSP and SP and the weakening of the BJP, Brahmin politics became marginalized. In such a situation, Mayawati started social engineering by appealing to Brahmins in 2007. The BSP gave a slogan that if a Brahmin blows the conch, the elephant will grow.
With the rise of the BJP, the Brahmin community became disillusioned with the Congress. Whichever party has played the Brahmin card in UP in the last three decades has benefited immensely politically. According to CSDS data, 72 percent of Brahmins voted for the BJP alliance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, while SP-BSP got 5 percent of Brahmin votes each. About 11 percent of Brahmins voted for the Congress. In the 2019 elections, 82 percent of Brahmins voted for the BJP, but the SP-BSP alliance and the Congress got 6 percent of the Brahmin vote each. Even in the 2024 elections, BJP has got 82 percent votes from the Brahmin community.
UP had the highest number of Brahmin MLAs in the 1980 elections. At that time there were 87 MLAs from the Brahmin community, but since then their numbers in the Legislative Assembly have steadily declined. In 2002, 41 Brahmins became MLAs, but in 2007 they managed to become 56 MLAs. When Mayawati came to power in 2007, 41 Brahmin MLAs were elected from the BSP. In 1993, there was only one Brahmin MLA from the BSP, but the number increased from election to election. According to a CSDS report in the 2007 UP elections, only 38 percent Brahmins voted for Mayawati and most of these votes went to the BSP where it fielded Brahmin candidates.
In 2012, 47 MLAs were elected from the Brahmin community, while in 2017, 58 MLAs were elected from the Brahmin community, of which 46 belonged to the BJP. Earlier, the number of Brahmins who won from BJP did not increase beyond 20. From 2002 to 2012, the number of Brahmins won from the BJP did not even touch double digits. At the same time, the highest number of 21 Brahmins from the SP won in the 2012 elections while the figure was limited to just 11 earlier. In the 2022 assembly elections, 52 MLAs have been elected from the Brahmin community, with the highest number of 46 from the BJP while five from the SP and one from the Congress.
In 2017, when the BJP re-emerged in Uttar Pradesh, Brahmins thought they would get the reins of power, but Yogi Adityanath, who belongs to the Thakur community, was made the CM and Dinesh Sharma, a Brahmin community, had to be made the CM. Satisfied with Deputy CM. After this, when the BJP returned to power in the 2022 elections, the reins of power remained in the hands of CM Yogi while the post of Deputy CM was given to Brijesh Pathak. In such a situation, the opposition is trying to create a Thakur vs Brahmin story.
From the Congress to the SP and the BSP, the Brahmin community, which has voted more than 80 per cent in favor of the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, is eyeing it. The Congress has appointed Avinash Pandey from the Brahmin community as the in-charge of UP, while Ajay Rai from the Bhumihar community has been given the charge of the state president. After MLAs from the Brahmin community like Manoj Pandey, Rakesh Pandey and Vinod Chaturvedi took a rebellious stand, Akhilesh Yadav has handed over the post of Leader of Opposition to Mata Prasad Pandey to break the anti-Brahmin narrative. In such a situation SP is planning to woo Brahmins and return to power in 2027, while BJP is trying to keep them with it.
