Undeterred by the failure of the alliance he had forged with Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday asked party workers to start preparing for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
The former chief minister asked party workers not to waste time and launch a door-to-door campaign to create awareness about the anti-people policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party governments at the Centre and in the state.
“We will continue our efforts to bring a mahaparivartan (major change),” Yadav said.
The SP president, however, did not mention a word about the future of his alliance with the BSP, though he did ask partymen to reach out to all sections of society, particularly the weaker ones.
“The BJP trades in falsehood and lies, whereas the samajwadis have an ideology that guides them. We have to reach out to colleges and universities since the youth are in great distress. There are no jobs and the future appears bleak to them,” he said.
Yadav directed the youths in his party to be offensive and not defensive while responding to the BJP’s claims.
“You should equip yourself with facts and figures and then challenge the BJP to a debate in order to expose it. You should not be disheartened at any cost,” he advised partymen.
The SP chief also said that his party would return to power in 2022 because his government had done the maximum development in the state.
“Those who voted for the BJP in 2017 are now repenting. We have to work hard and make a comeback in the assembly elections,” he added.
The SP-BSP-RLD alliance, though formidable in electoral arithmetic, failed to turn into political chemistry. The SP came off worse than its coalition partner BSP as the caste arithmetic of the gathbandhan in UP failed before a BJP wave in the Lok Sabha elections.
Despite its high expectations from the alliance, the SP could win only five seats, the same number it had won in the 2014 parliamentary elections. Its vote share also fell by four percentage points, from 22.35 per cent in 2017 UP assembly elections to a little under 18 per cent now.
In contrast, the BSP, which drew a blank last time, won 10 of the 38 seats it contested under the seat-sharing pact this time.
