Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday held a four-hour introspection meeting with party candidates to probe the reasons for the party having won only five of 80 seats in the state.
This is the first official meeting of the party after the elections results.
Barring four Yadav family members, no other candidate, including ministers, MLAs or sitting MPs, could win in the seats the party contested for.
At the meeting, chaired by chief minister and SP state president Akhilesh Yadav and senior minister Shivpal Singh Yadav, some candidates hinted that “Muslims had ditched the party” and also spoke about “backstabbing and non-cooperation” by party insiders.
According to an SP candidate, the meeting was “only a preliminary stock-taking” and there would be more feedback exercises in which district units and frontal organisations would be asked to spell out the reasons for defeat in each constituency.
“Netaji asked us to go back to the people in our respective constituencies,” said Uttar Pradesh minister Vinod Kumar Singh who lost the Kaiserganj LS seat to Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of the BJP.
“No action has been taken against any of the ministers who lost the elections,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}“No action has been taken against any of the ministers who lost the elections,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}In a statement issued later in the day, party state spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhary said that the SP chief had given a pep talk to the candidates and asked them to start working on regaining confidence of the people.
He asked the candidates to thank people in their constituencies for their votes, adding that the party got 22.26% votes which indicated votes from all sections.