Akhilesh Yadav Adds Blue to SP's Palette in Bid to Woo Dalit Voters

The Samajwadi Party has long been identified by red and green — its leaders in red caps, its bicycle symbol a fixture of Uttar Pradesh politics. Ahead of the 2027 Assembly election, party president Akhilesh Yadav is adding a third colour to that palette: blue.

Blue T-shirts and jeans have been introduced as the uniform for members of the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha, the party's student wing. Yadav has drawn a direct line between the colour and B R Ambedkar, the Constitution, the Bahujan movement, social justice and resistance to injustice.

The signal is aimed at voters beyond the SP's traditional Yadav-Muslim support base, and particularly at Dalits.

A Vacuum in Dalit Politics

Uttar Pradesh's Dalit electorate was for decades central to the political power of BSP chief Mayawati, whose party turned Dalit identity into an electoral force. The BSP's blue flag and its leader's politics were difficult to separate.

That dominance has weakened. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the SP won 37 seats in Uttar Pradesh while the BSP drew a blank. The result bolstered Akhilesh Yadav's contention that his PDA — Pichhde (Backwards), Dalit, Alpsankhyak (Minorities), with 'P' also standing for Pandits — can serve as an alternative social coalition to the BJP's electoral machinery.

The task is not merely to win Dalit votes but to convince Dalit voters that the SP can represent their aspirations without erasing their distinct social identity. The colour blue is central to that effort, marking a symbolic entry into a space the BSP has traditionally occupied.

The Arithmetic Behind PDA

The PDA formulation has been central to Akhilesh Yadav's strategy since 2022, seeking to combine backward castes, Dalits and minorities. It also reflects an electoral reality: Yadavs make up roughly 10% of the state's electorate and Muslims about 20%, while Dalits form another 20% bloc.

The SP had begun experimenting with Dalit outreach before the 2022 election, including the formation of the Baba Sahib Vahini aimed at Dalits outside the Jatav community, Mayawati's core base. Akhilesh Yadav also spoke of bringing together what he called the Samajwadi and Ambedkarwadi streams of politics. The blue uniform takes that approach further by giving the 'D' in PDA a visible identity.

While Akhilesh Yadav himself is usually seen in a white kurta-pyjama with the red Samajwadi cap, the jeans-and-T-shirt combination has been presented for the youth wing as a symbol of the younger generation — part caste arithmetic, part political rebranding.

Red Stays

One detail stands out in the new uniform: the red cap remains. The SP is not discarding its old identity so much as layering a new one onto it.

The red cap has a long association with socialist politics. The SP was founded by Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1992, and its red-and-green colours evolved over time. Mulayam Singh suggested in 1998 that the Yuvjan Sabha, the party's youth wing, wear red caps; the cap grew more prominent in the years that followed and became a powerful visual marker under Akhilesh Yadav. Red has traditionally been tied to socialist politics and workers, green to farmers.

In December 2021, shortly before the last Assembly election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked the red caps at a rally in Gorakhpur, calling those wearing them a "red alert" for Uttar Pradesh and linking the SP to corruption, crime, illegal occupation and alleged leniency towards terrorists. Akhilesh Yadav sought to reverse the symbolism, declaring the cap a "red alert" for the BJP and citing unemployment, inflation and farmers' problems. The party turned the jibe into campaign music, including a song invoking the red cap and the bicycle.

A Contest Over Memory

The BSP's decline has altered the state's competitive landscape. For years the SP and BSP occupied distinct social and political spaces — the BSP as the principal vehicle of Dalit assertion, the SP as strongly identified with OBC, particularly Yadav, politics. A weakened BSP changes that equation, and the party has also been distracted by internal turmoil, including Mayawati's public reprimand of her nephew Akash Anand, once seen as her political heir.

Akhilesh Yadav now faces an opportunity and a dilemma: he wants BSP voters without appearing to appropriate the BSP's politics. His language increasingly invokes Ambedkar, the Constitution, social justice and Kanshi Ram, while his organisational vocabulary revolves around PDA. The SP's decision to mark Kanshi Ram's birth anniversary on March 15 as PDA Diwas drew a sharp response from Mayawati, who accused the party of using Bahujan icons for electoral purposes. She may be electorally weaker, but she remains the custodian of a political memory Akhilesh Yadav is trying to enter.

The BJP, which cornered a substantial share of Dalit votes in 2017, 2019 and 2022, was jolted in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. A post-poll survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies-Lokniti attributed the SP's jump to 37 seats from five in 2019 to a consolidation of Yadav and Muslim voters along with a sizeable share of non-Jatav Dalits. The data showed 92% of Muslims and 82% of Yadavs voted for the INDIA bloc.