The Samajwadi Party’s 2017 assembly election campaign has begun, literally, with the party song already canned. And the hero in the song is chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, unlike the SP’s 2014 Lok Sabha election song that was Mulayam centric, and 2012 assembly poll song that was party centric.
An audio clip of the song does not mention either ‘Samajwadi Party’ or ‘Mulayam’ even once. The song is titled ‘Tarakki ka shubh-aarambh, Pragati ka Shri Ganesh, Akhilesh…Akhilesh…Akhilesh’.
It is sung and composed by Bollywood singer-composer Javed Ali, who had also sang the 2012 song ‘Yeh Samajwadi jhandaa’ (which eventually became the party’s anthem), and the 2014 ‘Maan se hai Mulayam, Iraadey loha hain’.
Party man and Hindi Sansthan chairperson Udai Pratap Singh, who wrote the lyrics for the previous two songs, has penned this one, too. A team would soon get down to making a video album of the song. The 2 minute 40 second song has not been released yet.
“This is going to be our lead song for 2017 elections,” said a party man who was privy to the production of the song.
The lyrics of the song make it clear that Akhilesh would be the party’s mascot for the 2017 elections, which is likely to be fiercely contested.
{{/usCountry}}The lyrics of the song make it clear that Akhilesh would be the party’s mascot for the 2017 elections, which is likely to be fiercely contested.
{{/usCountry}}Though Akhilesh was the architect for the party 2012 victory with his Kranti Rath campaign and reorganization of party’s youth cadre, he was never the party’s mascot.
Akhilesh had become SP’s state president in 2009. By 2011, he re-modeled several aspects of the party organisation. He hired professionals, IT experts, management specialists, et al to do party branding. He is the one who introduced a dress code in the party, elegantly done up print and video advertisement, and brought in the culture of creating proper songs and anthems for the party.
Before this, the party largely used shabbily sung parodies on Bollywood hit numbers of those days.
The new song that talks about Akhilesh and his government’s work goes like this: ‘UP ko pragati ke path pe, hai yakeen tum laaogey; Har iccha aur har sapna poora kar dikhlaaogey. Ghar-aangan tum se badlega, sutradhaar tum parivartan ke, samriddhi ke tum paryaye.’
“It’s a development song, and our campaign would focus on development agenda,” said a party leader.