Yadav has made a concerted effort to bring Dalits into the Samajwadi Party’s political fold. After the 2022 Assembly elections, he consolidated the PDA (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak โ backward classes, Dalits and minorities) social coalition. The results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were seen as a vindication of this strategy. Local Dalit leaders have played an important role in the effort, helping the SP move beyond its traditional Muslim-Yadav (MY) support base and build a presence among Dalit voters.
The Agra convention was organised under the stewardship of Rajya Sabha MP Ramjilal Suman, who belongs to the Dalit community. Yadav repeatedly referred to Suman during his address, implicitly crediting him for the successful mobilisation.
“After this Dalit convention in Agra, the ground will shift beneath the feet of those who consider themselves invincible. Dalits will deal the BJP a blow this time. The ‘D’ in PDA stands for powerful Dalits,” he said.
Yadav also alleged that more than 200 statues of Babasaheb Ambedkar had been vandalised in Uttar Pradesh. “The hand holding the Constitution is the very hand that is being broken,” he said.
Earlier, Ramjilal Gautam, addressing the gathering, said western Uttar Pradesh had traditionally stood with Babasaheb Ambedkar and was once a stronghold of the Republican Party founded by him.
“People from the RSS and the BJP are enemies of Dalits. Ambedkar’s statues are being vandalised today, in a conspiracy to attack his ideas and, through them, hurt the sentiments of Dalits,” he said.
The massive convention in Agra is being projected by the Samajwadi Party as a show of its growing outreach to Dalits ahead of the Assembly elections. Before 2019, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), particularly under Mayawati, frequently accused the SP of being anti-Dalit, invoking the 1995 guest house incident to target the party’s top leadership.
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