LUCKNOW Amid the buzz that Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav will jump into the Lok Sabha 2024 poll fray from Kannauj, the district unit of the party is busy preparing for his longest roadshow ever in the constituency.
Significantly, it was Kannauj -- known as the perfume capital of India -- from where the SP chief and former U.P. chief minister Akhilesh began his political career in 2000 by winning the Lok Sabha by-polls.
The roadshow titled ‘Samajwadi Vikas-Rozgaar Yatra’ -- a bid to highlight that the ruling BJP “undid all development and employment creation efforts done” in Kannauj and the rest of the state by the previous Samajwadi Party government -- will cover several stretches (about 40 km in all) from the cow milk plant to Mandi on August 16.
“We are working with the mindset that he (Akhilesh) will contest the polls from Kannauj. There is no official announcement yet but he dropped emphatic hints more than once that he will contest from here,” said Salim Khan, Kannauj district president of the SP.
Kannauj is the only district (other than the hometown Etawah) that Akhilesh has visited so frequently since the 2022 U.P. assembly polls. “He visited Kannauj more than half a dozen times since then,” added Khan.
{{/usCountry}}Kannauj is the only district (other than the hometown Etawah) that Akhilesh has visited so frequently since the 2022 U.P. assembly polls. “He visited Kannauj more than half a dozen times since then,” added Khan.
{{/usCountry}}The seriousness of the yatra in the SP could be gauged from the fact that Akhilesh has summoned Salim Khan and a few other top office-bearers of the Kannauj unit to the party’s state headquarters in Lucknow on Sunday to have a meeting with him to discuss the organisation and arrangments for the yatra.
Kannauj was considered the bastion of the Samajwadi Party till the BJP won it in 2019, defeating Akhilesh’s wife and present Mainpuri MP, Dimple Yadav. The SP won seven elections in a row from this LS constituency (including two by-polls) from 1998 till 2019. Dimple, who was the joint candidate of the SP-BSP 2019 LS poll coalition, lost the seat to BJP’s Subrat Pathak by a thin margin of 19,000 votes.
Just like Akhilesh, Dimple too began her political career in Kannauj when she won the 2012 Lok Sabha by-polls on the seat. The couple held the seat five times in a row -- Akhilesh won it three times (2000, 2004, 2009) and Dimple (2012 and 2014). Now, Akhilesh wants to wrest the bastion back.
“Not only the seat is dear to Akhilesh ji because he won his first elections from here but all the more because Kannauj’s first MP was Ram Manohar Lohia (an SP icon) when Lohia went to the Parliament in 1967, winning it as Samyukta Socialist Party candidate. Then Netaji won it in 1999. So, Akhilesh Ji considers the seat a legacy of Lohia and Mulayam,” said a senior SP leader in Lucknow.
The SP national secretary, Rajendra Chaudhary, said, “Kannauj is famous for its Itr (perfume) the world over. Akhilesh Ji did a lot for Kannauj’s development and the Itr industry and employment creation. He had created a perfume park and had planned a perfume museum in Kannauj. Everything was undone by the BJP government. The cow milk plant, from where the yatra will start, was also built under the Akhilesh-led U.P. government, and our previous government had also worked on creating Asia’s biggest potato mandi (trade market) but everything is in shambles now because of the BJP government.”
Chaudhary said that the yatra will highlight the issues of development, unemployment, farmers’ distress, issues faced by traders and business community, law and order, etc., that the state is facing.