Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav launched a three-pronged attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday, June 18, 2026, accusing the ruling party and its allies of prioritising money over religion while flagging alleged wrongdoing in Ayodhya, law-and-order failures in Gorakhpur, and what he called a conspiracy against reservation rights of backward, Dalit, and minority communities.

Context

Posting on X, Yadav wrote — 'भाजपा और उसके संगी-साथियों के लिए धन ही धर्म है' — ('For the BJP and its associates, money itself is religion') — a pointed inversion of the party's Hindutva identity. He accompanied the post with four images and listed three specific charges: an 'Ayodhya mahapap-mahaghotala' (great sin and great scam in Ayodhya), Gorakhpur topping Uttar Pradesh in crime, and a 'PDA aarakshan haqmaari ghotala' (a scam robbing the PDA communities of their reservation rights).

The post carries no further elaboration beyond the bullet points, but each charge maps onto a distinct political battleground that the Samajwadi Party has been contesting since the BJP returned to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.

Policy Backdrop

The Ayodhya Ram Temple was inaugurated in January 2024 following construction that began after the Supreme Court's November 2019 title verdict. Opposition parties have periodically demanded transparency over fund collection and expenditure related to the temple trust, though no formal audit findings have been made public. Yadav's reference to a 'mahaghotala' in Ayodhya appears to echo those demands, though specific allegations remain unverified in established public records.

On reservations, Yadav's PDA framework — shorthand for Pichhda, Dalit aur Alpsankhyak (Backward, Dalit and Minority) communities — has been the Samajwadi Party's primary electoral mobilisation tool since 2022. The party has consistently argued that BJP-era policy adjustments have diluted OBC and Dalit quota benefits, a charge the ruling party contests.

Gorakhpur, the Lok Sabha constituency of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, has been a recurring flashpoint in the opposition's law-and-order critique of the state government. National crime data releases have been cited by opposition parties to question the BJP's 'law and order' governance narrative in Uttar Pradesh, though Gorakhpur's precise ranking in the state's crime indices for recent years is not independently confirmed.

Stakeholders and Impact

The three charges are calibrated to resonate with distinct voter blocs. The Ayodhya allegation targets voters who feel the religious project has been commercially exploited. The Gorakhpur crime charge is aimed at eastern Uttar Pradesh voters, a region the BJP has dominated. The PDA reservation charge speaks directly to OBC, Dalit, and minority communities — the coalition Yadav has been building as the primary counter to BJP dominance ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

Together, the three points represent a compressed version of the Samajwadi Party's broader governance critique: that the BJP has failed on development, public safety, and social equity simultaneously.

What's Next

The BJP is likely to respond by pointing to its own crime-control record and the Ram Temple's completion as a civilisational achievement, while dismissing the scam allegations as politically motivated. Any official audit of Ayodhya temple trust accounts, fresh National Crime Records Bureau data for Uttar Pradesh, or movement on reservation policy in the state legislature could sharpen this debate considerably. With 2027 assembly polls drawing closer, attacks of this nature from Yadav are expected to grow more frequent and more specific, testing whether the PDA coalition can translate opposition sentiment into electoral consolidation.