E-Paper
Mission 2022: Akhilesh criss-crosses state, covers 40 districts
During these visits, he has addressed cadre training camps, kisan mahapanchayats, public meetings and press conferences. He has also gone to temples, besides Muslim and Buddhist places of worship
Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav is touring the state like never before with the 2022 UP assembly elections in mind, travelling to nearly 40 districts and all regions of the state, including Bundelkhand.
He has not only left all other top Opposition leaders behind in this respect but appears to have outdone himself in spending time on the road.
Yadav’s tours now also involve frequent overnight stays in the districts. The sequence began with a three-day visit to his Lok Sabha constituency Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh in December.
During these visits, he has addressed cadre training camps, kisan mahapanchayats, public meetings and press conferences. He has also gone to temples, besides Muslim and Buddhist places of worship.
At all the districts, Akhilesh posted pictures of him amid the dense crowds on his social media accounts. Most of them were road trips but he did use an aeroplane on a couple of visits, including one to Chitrakoot.
In Etawah, he addressed a gathering from atop a tractor. He also stood on the roof of his rath (a luxury election campaign bus) at his Aligarh kisan mahapanchayat. In Rampur, he not only flagged off the 350-km-long Samajwadi Cycle Yatra to Lucknow, but also pedalled the first 10 km of the route along with party workers. He even travelled on a UP roadways bus on the way to Etawah.
“The way crowds are gathering indicates how restive the people are to vote the BJP out and bring back the Samajwadi Party,” said SP state spokesperson and former minister Rajendra Chaudhary.
The tours have also quelled the criticism that he earlier did not hit the streets the way his father and party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav did when he led the party.
Keeping his attack focused only on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Akhilesh Yadav never spoke about any other rival political party, be it the Congress or the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Among his political rivals, BSP chief Mayawati has not travelled across the state at all, while Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra visited a few districts such as Saharanpur and Mathura. She is likely to go to four eastern UP districts to address kisan mahapanchayats in Varanasi, Mirzapur, Sonbhadra, Prayagraj and Gorakhpur this month.
“It is good that Akhilesh Yadav is doing such hectic tours and engaged in taking on the BJP much ahead of the polls. There is no other way, if he and his party have to fight the BJP and aspire to win back power. As of now, it is only his party and he who are in a position to take on BJP well. Such hard work and some strategic alliances, if he does them, would certainly help in the fight,” said Prof SK Dwivedi, a political analyst and former head of the department of political science, Lucknow University.
Dwivedi added: “Before this, his solo Kranti Rath tour of the state in 2011 shortly before the 2012 UP assembly elections is still etched in public memory.”
Mulayam had credited Akhilesh Yadav and his Kranti Rath campaign for making the SP win a full majority for the first time in its electoral history. That achievement saw Akhilesh Yadav becoming the Uttar Pradesh chief minister for the first time in 2012.
