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Akhilesh Yadav, Jayant Chaudhary aim to break the Agra jinx
SP-RLD leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhary will launch a full-day campaign on Friday in the Taj City in a bid to change their parties’ fortunes in the upcoming assembly elections.
Aiming to break the decade long jinx in Agra, the SP-RLD alliance leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhary are set to launch a full day campaign on Friday in the Taj City in a bid to change their parties’ fortunes in the forthcoming assembly polls.
Both Samajwadi Party (SP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) have not tasted success in assembly elections for the last one decade in the city.
While the SP last tasted success in the assembly elections of 2012 by winning one seat -- Bah in Agra district – the wait for RLD had been twice as long as it was two decades ago, in 2002, when RLD won two seats in Agra district as its candidate won from Fatehpur Sikri and Etmadpur constituencies.
With nine assembly seats of Agra district going to polls in the first phase of UP assembly elections on February 10, Akhilesh and Jayant will, besides campaigning in Agra, hold a press conference at here. Both are the leaders are scheduled to hold campaigns and address meetings in various assembly constituencies of the district.
Although the SP had its member of parliament from Agra in 1999 and 2004, the success was more attributed to the charisma of cine actor Raj Babbar, who was born in the district.
Barring these two elections, Samajwadi Party candidates had not fared well on the Agra parliament seat, which has mostly seen a BJP-BSP contest.
In last assembly elections – 2017 – the SP and RLD were not able to win any of the nine assembly seats in the district. Even in 2012 assembly elections, when Samajwadi Party performed exceedingly well in Uttar Pradesh and formed a full majority government, it was only Bah assembly seat which went to SP and that too was held as a personal achievement of Raja Aridaman Singh from the royal Bhadawar family.
The drought of success in the 2017 assembly elections for both SP and RLD was not confined to Agra district, but in Aligarh district too. All seven assembly seats of Aligarh, which is also going to polls in the first phase, had gone to the BJP in 2017.
In Mathura too, SP and RLD had no success and it was only BSP (with one seat win) that came in the way of a clean sweep by BJP, which won the other four of the five seats in the 2017 elections.
In the 2007 assembly elections too, SP and RLD had not won any of the nine assembly seats in Agra, when six seats were won by BSP, two by BJP and one by the Raj Babbar-led Jan Morcha.
Both Akhilesh and Jayant are now in no mood of letting a repeat of the last elections happen and will go all out to woo the voters on Friday in Agra.
RLD is contesting three assembly seats -- Agra Rural, Fatehpur Sikri and Kheragarh -- while Samajwadi Party is contesting Agra North, Agra South, Agra Cantt, Bah, Etmadpur and Fatehabad.
