Lucknow, Sep 22: A poster outside the Samajwadi Party headquarters showing Lord Hanuman blessing party chief Akhilesh Yadav for the 2027 Uttar Pradesh elections has spiced up state politics, as it was spotted a day after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath termed the upcoming poll battle a contest between the supporters of “Babar” and “Bajrang”.
Addressing a BJP programme in Meerut on Monday, which was also attended by party president Nitin Nabin, Adityanath said that only by “Bajrang's devotees” can answer “Babar's followers”.
Ever since the controversial police firing on Kar Sevaks who gathered in Ayodhya seeking the removal of the Babri mosque during Mulayam Singh Yadav's tenure as the chief minister in the ‘90s, the BJP has consistently accused the Samajwadi Party (SP) of appeasement politics and used the term “Babur's supporters” to run down the party.
However, the poster outside the SP office has drawn a lot of attention as it was spotted after Adityanath used the term “Bajrang's devotees”, ostensibly to denote BJP supporters.
The poster shows Yadav sitting with folded hands before Lord Hanuman, who is shown blessing the SP chief. The message – “Vijay Bhav: 2027” – makes it obvious that SP is out to blunt BJP's aggressive politics with what some party leaders describe as “soft Hindutva”.
The poster has been put up by a SP worker just outside the party headquarters in Lucknow.
However, this isn't an isolated poster that has surfaced in the run-up to the 2027 Uttar Pradesh polls.
On Sunday and Monday, posters targeting the SP chief surfaced in several parts of the state, including Lucknow, Unnao, Etawah, Sitapur, Bareilly, Meerut, Azamgarh and Ghazipur.
The posters featured images of SP leader Azam Khan and gangster-politicians Atiq Ahmed and Mukhtar Ansari with slogans such as “Azam, Atiq and Mukhtar, Yahi Chalatey The Sarkar” and “One District, One Mafia” – a slogan BJP leaders frequently use to slam the previous SP rule.
The posters were later pulled down by the SP cadres.
Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party chief and Uttar Pradesh minister Om Prakash Rajbhar has also taken a dig at the Hanuman-blessing-Akhilesh poster.
“It’s good that closer to polls, SP leaders are flaunting Hindu identity for political gains. But tell me why would Hanuman ji bless him (Yadav)? These SP leaders are dragging gods into politics,” Rajbhar said.
As the elections near, the poll turf in the most populous state has begun hotting up, with supporters of the BJP, SP and the Congress using posters, videos, social media content and public statements to attack each other.
Earlier this year, posters were put up in Amethi and some other parts of the state with slogans like “Aap Ko Kya Chahiye? Akhilesh Ka Lyari Raj”, referring to Lyari, a locality in Karachi made popular by the Ranvir Singh-starrer film ‘Dhurandhar’.
Only recently, Adityanath claimed that there was a conspiracy to offer namaz at Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya during SP rule. The SP denied the charge.
