AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi threw a sharp dart at Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday, November 15, 2026, accusing him — in a pointed, rhyming jab — of dancing to the BJP's tune even as he positions himself as the principal opposition voice in Uttar Pradesh.

Posting on X, Owaisi wrote in Hindi: 'हमारी डोर अल्लाह के हाथ में है, लेकिन @yadavakhilesh की डोर ज़रूर @BJP4India के हाथ में है' — 'Our strings are in Allah's hands, but Akhilesh Yadav's strings are certainly in BJP's hands.' The play on the word dor (string, as in a puppet's string) is deliberate and biting.

A Rivalry That Never Fully Went Underground

AIMIM and the Samajwadi Party have long competed — sometimes bitterly — for overlapping constituencies of Muslim voters and marginalised communities across Uttar Pradesh. In the 2022 UP assembly elections, the two parties fielded separate candidates in several seats, drawing mutual accusations of splitting the anti-BJP vote. That wound, it appears, has not healed.

Owaisi's post is paired with a video — the specifics of which could not be independently verified — that presumably supplies the visual evidence he is pointing to. The charge itself, however, is familiar: that Akhilesh Yadav's opposition credentials are performative, and that the SP ultimately serves as a pressure valve that benefits the ruling party.

Why This Lands Hard With the 2027 UP Polls on the Horizon

With the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections beginning to cast a long shadow over state politics, every statement about alliances — or the absence of them — carries real electoral weight. The opposition arithmetic in UP is fragile: SP, AIMIM, Congress and smaller formations each control fragments of a vote share that, if unified, could seriously challenge the BJP. When Owaisi publicly labels Akhilesh a BJP proxy, he is not merely trading insults — he is signalling to Muslim and minority voters that SP is not a safe parking space for their mandate.

Rhetoric like this sharpens the pressure on both parties to clarify where they stand on any potential pre-poll seat-sharing arrangement. The 2027 contest will likely hinge on whether that consolidation happens — or whether competitive distrust keeps the opposition fragmented and BJP's path to a third consecutive term in Lucknow wide open.

Owaisi has built AIMIM's national identity around precisely this kind of confrontational clarity. Whether voters in UP find it persuasive — or see it as one more obstacle to unity — may shape the opening moves of the state's campaign season.