2024 Lok Sabha polls: Samajwadi Party will challenge BJP, others should decide role, says Akhilesh Yadav
Akhilesh Yadav made it clear that the Samajwadi Party will play the lead role in formation of an opposition alliance in Uttar Pradesh
Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday said his party, which is fighting the BJP at every level in Uttar Pradesh, will challenge and defeat it in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The other parties should decide their role in the Lok Sabha election -- whether they want to support the Samajwadi Party or not in the electoral battle against the BJP, he said at a press conference at the SP office in Lucknow. The former U.P. chief minister made this point three days after the conclusion of his party’s national executive meeting on March 19.
He made it clear that the SP will play the lead role in formation of an opposition alliance in U.P.
He also said that during the upcoming assembly elections, the SP will field candidates in those states where it has a party organisation and contest the polls with its alliance partners.
To mobilise the opposition for formation of the Third Front, the SP chief had visited Telangana to participate in a Bharat Rashtra Samithi rally organised by Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao in Khammam on January 18.
He also visited Chennai to participate in Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin’s birthday celebrations on March 1. On the eve of his party’s Kolkata national executive meeting, he discussed the alliance issue with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on March 17.
The BJP government has to give an account to the people of its six years in power, he said. He said the government should say how many promises made to the youngsters about jobs and employment have been fulfilled.
Akhilesh Yadav also referred to the relocation of a Sarus crane, which had lived with one Arif Khan Gurjar of Amethi’s Mandkha village for about a year, to the Samaspur Bird Sanctuary in Rae Bareli by forest officials.
“I went to meet Arif, who saved a Sarus crane. The government snatched the bird from him. Earlier when I went to Kanpur jail to meet a party MLA, the state government transferred him to another jail. The government is committing atrocities on senior SP leader Mohammad Azam Khan and his family because he is a socialist,” the SP chief said.
The Samajwadi Party believes that there should be holidays on all festivals, including Vishwakarma Jayanti and Nishadraj’s birth anniversary, he said.
He also claimed the BJP government had no answer on inflation, unemployment and problems. That is why it was diverting the attention of the people by raising other issues, he said.
Reacting to points raised by Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary said that the SP president has been raising the same points despite the government having cleared the position on those subjects.
“Some people are unable to see anything positive and keep repeating themselves. Chief minister Yogi Adityanathji had responded to all the accusations with facts and figures. However, instead of hearing those points, the leader of the opposition remained absent then,” the state BJP chief said.
Chaudhary claimed that the SP leader was unable to digest the fact that during the Global Investors’ Summit proposals worth ₹35 lakh crore were received for the state.
During his press conference, Akhilesh Yadav had also made a mention of state’s tourism and culture minister Jaiveer Singh, who was earlier with the Samajwadi Party, but switched loyalties later. Jaiveer responded to SP chief and tweeted: “Probably the immediate reason for his outburst is Samajwadi Party’s inability to win anything in the cooperative polls in Mainpuri and Firozabad.”
“Those who were behind riots earlier failed to even find candidates. The leader of the opposition has in the past even urged the two deputy chief ministers to become CM by getting 100 MLAs to the SP camp. But the people of the state don’t take him seriously,” Jaiveer Singh said.
