Will provide rights and share as per your population: Akhilesh reaches out to OBCs

Former U.P. CM faces challenge of bridging political gap between Yadav and non-Yadav OBCs

In his most aggressive pitch for a caste census for the Backward Castes yet, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday promised members of the OBC community in Uttar Pradesh that if voted to power his government would carry out such an exercise and provide them “rights, honour and representation” as per their share in the population.

The formula of providing communities as per their population was “an old fight,” Mr. Yadav said, sprinkling the flavour and rhetoric of “Bahujan” politics through terms like haq, abadi ke hisaab se, hissedari and bhagidhari to his campaign, something that he shied away from in the last election, where he solely relied on a development-centric model of governance.