As political parties in Uttar Pradesh start recalibrating caste equations ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections, Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati is making repeated attempts once again to revive the party’s old Dalit-Brahmin outreach model — a strategy that once helped her secure a full majority in the state in 2007.
Her latest remarks on the issue came after the recent state Cabinet expansion, where the BJP attempted a caste balancing by accommodating OBC, Dalit and Brahmin faces before 2027.
With her statements, the BSP chief is seeking to sharpen a parallel narrative — that despite political representation in the BJP, sections of Brahmins in UP feel increasingly “neglected” and “unsafe”.
Referring to a recent attack on a BJP youth leader from the Brahmin community in Lucknow, she said, “UP mein Brahman samaaj kewal upekshit hi nahin balki kaafi asurakshit bhi hai, jo ati chintaniya hai (Brahmins in UP are not only neglected but also insecure, which is extremely worrying).”
The statement is politically significant because it attempts to create a distinction between symbolic representation and actual political satisfaction within the Brahmin community — a voter bloc that has largely remained with the BJP since 2014.
In fact, it is her second such verbal outreach to the community in recent months.
Earlier this year, during her birthday address on January 15, she had attempted to foreground alleged discontent among Brahmins under the BJP government by referring to a meeting of Brahmin MLAs from BJP, SP and Congress on the sidelines of the winter session of the Assembly in Lucknow by using words like “upeksha” and “zulm-zyadati” (neglect and atrocities) against members of the community.
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“During the winter session of the UP Assembly last year, not just BJP but even Brahmin MLAs from the SP and Congress gathered in Lucknow and expressed concern over the neglect of the community and recurring crimes and atrocities against them under the current BJP government,” the BSP chief had said , claiming they were given due representation during the BSP government in the state and promised that all their expectations will be met when her party forms government again.
By invoking legislators cutting across party lines, Mayawati is trying to project alleged Brahmin unease as a wider political phenomenon and not just an allegation by the Opposition parties against the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, in an attempt to woo them to the BSP fold before the 2027 polls.
Her statements reminding the community are seen as a calibrated effort to revive her 2007 “social engineering” formula, when the party successfully brought Dalits, Brahmins and sections of Muslims together under the “Sarvajan” plank.
Even as the 2007 election remains the BSP’s biggest political success in UP when it won 206 seats in the 403-member Assembly with a 30.43 per cent vote share, comfortably crossing the majority mark, its decline since then has been equally dramatic.
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In the 2022 Assembly elections, the party was reduced to just one seat with 12.88 per cent vote share, marking its worst performance in decades. This sharp fall has forced the BSP to reassess its social coalition strategy ahead of 2027 and revisit its old social engineering formula that once worked.
BSP leaders at the time had used slogans like “Brahmin shankh bajayega, hathi chalta jayega”, “Haathi nahin, Ganesh hain, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hain”, “Tilak lagao hathi par, baaki sab baisakhi par” to consolidate the Brahmin votes with the Dalits as a victory formula.
Over the last decade, the BSP’s core Dalit vote has remained partially intact but insufficient on its own to make the party electorally competitive.
Why Brahmins matter in 2027
The Brahmin community — estimated at around 10-12 per cent of UP’s population and influential in regions such as Purvanchal and Awadh — remains electorally significant. While Brahmins continue to largely back the BJP in the polls, in the recent years there have been incidents of sporadic resentment over issues such as local political representation, anger against bureaucracy, encounters and law-and-order incidents, which have surfaced in the Opposition’s narratives as well.
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Mayawati appears to be attempting to politically channel that dissatisfaction by projecting the BSP as a party capable of offering “security”, “respect” and proportional representation to the community. Her renewed outreach also comes at a time when the BJP itself is carefully balancing caste representation.
The recent Cabinet expansion was widely viewed as an attempt to strengthen OBC, Dalit and Brahmin representation before 2027. BJP leaders maintain that the party continues to give substantial representation to Brahmins in government and organisation, since one of the deputy chief ministers belongs to the community and that another Brahmin face was inducted during the recent Cabinet expansion.
Interestingly, the BSP now faces competition not just from BJP, but also from the SP, which has itself intensified outreach towards upper castes and non-Yadav communities, sometimes referring to “A” in the PDA as also “agare” (forwards).
