Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Monday that he will not contest the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next year. He also announced an alliance between his party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) for the upcoming state elections.
When asked about taking uncle Shivpal Yadav’s Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia (PSPL) along in the polls, he told mediapersons during an interaction, “I don’t have any problem in this. He and his men will be given due honour”.
Yadav is a Member of Parliament (MP) from Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh. He has never contested the assembly polls in UP.
Yadav’s Samajwadi Party was in the power in Uttar Pradesh before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dethroned it and captured power in 2017 assembly elections.
This time, Yadav is aiming to defeat the BJP and for that, his party has forged alliance with Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), a former BJP ally-turned-rival. SBSP president Om Prakash Rajbhar was a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, but was dismissed by Adityanath in 2019 after he accused the state government of not doing enough for the backward castes. SP has also inducted a BJP legislator and six rebel Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLAs ahead of the polls.
Addressing a meeting in Hardoi on Sunday, the SP chief claimed that all sections of people in Uttar Pradesh have made up their minds to bring his party to power in the state after the 2022 assembly elections.
Taking a dig at the ruling BJP, Yadav said that the party has only one thing to do – renaming works carried out by the previous SP government. Yadav also said that the saffron party was “unlikely” to find ticket-seeking candidates due to people’s “anger” against the ruling party.
“All sections of people have made up their minds to elect an SP government in the assembly elections, following which Uttar Pradesh will get back on the path to growth and prosperity,” said Yadav.
Akhilesh Yadav has even launched a slogan ‘Khadeda Hobe’, based on Trinamool Congress’ massively popular poll cry during West Bengal Assembly elections, to claim that the Adityanath-led government will be driven away from the state following the next Assembly election.
He launched a statewide ‘Vijay Yatra’ from Kanpur earlier this month, which the SP said will “make people aware about the corrupt, autocratic and suppressive policies of the BJP government and to establish real democracy”.
Akhilesh became the president of the Samajwai Party for the second time in 2017, just ahead of the assembly elections. In the run-up to the elections, Akhilesh and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav – who founded the party – had a falling out that played out in public several times. However, Mulayam gave his blessings to Akhilesh before the polls.