New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party under its chief Akhilesh Yadav has engaged political campaigning agency Indian Political Action Committee to manage its campaign for the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, marking what appears to be the first time the party has opted for a full-scale professional political consultancy to run a statewide operation.
According to sources familiar with the development, IPAC has begun initial hiring for its Uttar Pradesh unit and has taken office space in the Hazratganj area of Lucknow. The early phase is focused on administrative setup and recruitment. Full operational deployment of campaign staff is expected only after the conclusion of the West Bengal Assembly elections, scheduled for April-May, where IPAC is currently handling the campaign for the ruling Trinamool Congress.
At present, only a core administrative presence has been established in Lucknow, with broader field teams to be rolled out in a phased manner once the Bengal election cycle concludes.
Sources also indicated that the Samajwadi Party had been in discussions with another political consultancy, Showtime, before finalising IPAC. Those talks, however, did not fructify. The reasons for the breakdown are not immediately clear, but party strategists ultimately decided to proceed with IPAC.
The move signals a structural shift in the Samajwadi Party’s campaign architecture. Historically, the party has relied on internal leadership, caste arithmetic calculations, and region-specific political networks rather than institutionalised data-driven campaign management firms. The engagement of IPAC suggests a more centralised and professionalised approach ahead of a high-stakes contest in India’s most politically consequential state.
One of the reasons attributed by insiders to the Samajwadi Party’s decision to engage a political consultancy is their assessment that the party has a strong chance to regain power in Uttar Pradesh after defeats in the last two Assembly elections. Party leaders argue that perceived institutional and bureaucratic corruption and loose administration could outweigh the political appeal of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath among voters and push the Samajwadi Party beyond the 202-seat mark.
Uttar Pradesh, with 403 Assembly seats, remains the principal battleground for national political narratives and parliamentary arithmetic. Entering the 2027 race nearly two years in advance allows for voter database construction, booth-level mapping, constituency segmentation, narrative calibration, and digital outreach architecture to be built over an extended horizon rather than within the compressed timelines typical of earlier state contests.
