Newsmaker | SP Dalit leader who triumphed over BJP in Ayodhya: Who is Awadhesh Prasad?

The Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, consecrated in January, marked the completion of one of the Sangh Parivar’s ideological goals and was initially expected to boost the BJP’s prospects in the Lok Sabha elections. But as the party took a big hit in Uttar Pradesh, with its tally almost halved, one of its most prominent losses was in the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency of which Ayodhya is a part.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) leader who snatched the seat from the BJP in the prestige battle is veteran MLA Awadhesh Prasad who was the only candidate from a Dalit community to win from a non-reserved constituency. Prasad trumped the BJP’s two-time sitting MP Lallu Singh by 54,567 votes, riding on Dalit votes that earlier used to go to the Congress in Faizabad.

Though Prasad does not like to identify himself as just a Dalit leader, he is recognised as the Dalit face of the “Yadav party”. The 77-year-old nine-time MLA and now first-time MP, who is from the Pasi community, is among the founder members of the SP and has been constantly by party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav’s side starting in 1974.

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Start of political career

A law graduate from Lucknow University, Prasad entered active politics at the age of 21. He joined the Bharatiya Kranti Dal led by former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh, whom he considers his “political father”, and contested his first Assembly election from Sohawal in Ayodhya district in 1974.

During Emergency, Prasad served as the Faizabad district co-convener of the anti-Emergency Sangharsh Samiti and was arrested. While in jail, his mother passed away and he failed to get parole to attend her last rites. After Emergency, he quit law to become a full-time politician. In 1981, Prasad, then a general secretary of both the Lok Dal and the Janata Party, could not attend the last rites of his father as he was away in Amethi counting votes during the Lok Sabha bypolls in which Rajiv Gandhi, contesting his first election, defeated the Lok Dal’s Sharad Yadav. Prasad was under strict instructions from Charan Singh not to leave the counting room. Through the counting of votes for seven days — this was a time before EVMs — Prasad remained at the counting centre despite hearing of his father’s demise.

Joining the SP

As the Janata Party splintered, Awadhesh Prasad found himself by Mulayam’s side as he launched the SP in 1992. Prasad was appointed the party’s national secretary and member of its central parliamentary board. Later, he was promoted to the position of SP national general secretary, a post in which he is serving his fourth term.

Though this parliamentary election is the first time he has won, he unsuccessfully contested once before in 1996 from the Akbarpur Lok Sabha constituency — this seat used to exist in the erstwhile Faizabad district and is not the same as the current Akbarpur parliamentary seat in Kanpur Dehat. Prasad, however, had more luck in the Assembly elections and to date lost only twice in nine contests — in 1991, when he was the Janata Party candidate from Sohawal and in 2017, when he fought as an SP nominee from Milkipur.

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Now the SP’s Dalit face, Prasad shared the stage with party chief Akhilesh Yadav at the SP national executive meeting in Kolkata in March 2023 and is crucial to the party’s efforts to expand beyond its Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) base through the PDA — Pichde (backward classes or OBCs), Dalits, Alpasankhyak (minorities) — strategy. Now a parliamentarian, Prasad’s profile within the party and outside is only expected to rise further.