Akhilesh Yadav to visit Ayodhya Ram Temple with family for first time since consecration

Samajwadi Party national president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will visit the Ram Temple in Ayodhya with his family on December 12, in what will be his first visit to the shrine since its consecration in January 2024.SP president Akhilesh Yadav addressing workers and leaders at the party’s state headquarters in Lucknow on Wednesday. (HT) (HT Photo)Samajwadi Party leader and former UP minister Tej Narayan Pandey, popularly known as Pawan Pandey, confirmed the plan. Pandey will also accompany Yadav and his family during the visit. The announcement comes nearly three years after the temple's grand consecration and just months before the high-stakes 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.“The SP national president Akhilesh Ji along with his family will first visit Hanumangarhi and then the Ram Temple. I will also be with them,” Pandey told HT. Yadav, along with his wife Dimple Yadav and their children, will first offer prayers at the historic Hanumangarhi Temple before proceeding to the Ram Temple for darshan of Ram Lalla.Political observers said the visit could be viewed as a deliberate effort by the Samajwadi Party to blunt the BJP’s long-standing narrative branding the Samajwadi Party and its leaders as "anti-Hindu."The BJP has repeatedly invoked the 1990 firing on kar sevaks in Ayodhya amid the Ram Temple movement during the tenure of Akhilesh's father, then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, to attack the Samajwadi Party.Akhilesh Yadav had earlier linked his Ram Temple visit to the completion of the Kedareshwar Mahadev temple he is constructing in Etawah (Saifai). The construction of that temple is in its final stages, with only minor finishing work remaining.In October, during a visit to Ayodhya for a Shrimad Bhagwat Katha organised by Pandey, Yadav reiterated that he would seek an auspicious date for the temple darshan once the Etawah project was ready and asked Pandey to finalise it. The timing of the visit is significant, given that the BJP has often used Ayodhya as a tool against Akhilesh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party.Ahead of the Akhilesh has already declared Pawan Pandey as the SP candidate from the Ayodhya Assembly seat and publicly dared Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to contest from there. The BJP continues to project the Ram Temple as a central achievement of its tenure, while also facing occasional scrutiny over issues such as alleged irregularities in temple donations.For the Samajwadi Party, the December 12 visit forms part of a broader outreach. In recent months, Akhilesh has increased visible engagement with Hindu religious sites and leaders, including temple visits with family members and meetings with seers. Analysts see this as an attempt to expand the party’s appeal beyond its traditional PDA (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) base and neutralise the BJP’s Hindutva edge among non-Yadav and upper-caste voters.The planned darshan is expected to trigger sharp political exchanges. The BJP is likely to question the delay and the sincerity of the visit, while the SP will present it as a natural expression of faith rather than a political performance. With the 2027 Assembly elections approaching, every major religious or cultural gesture in Uttar Pradesh carries heavy electoral weight, and Akhilesh Yadav’s first post-consecration appearance at the Ram Temple will be closely watched for both its symbolism and its political messaging.