Claiming that his party could win up to 400 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls early next year, Samajwadi Party chief and former chief minister of UP, Akhilesh Yadav, launched his poll campaign by joining the ‘Samajwadi Cycle Yatra’ in Lucknow on the occasion of the 89th birth anniversary of socialist leader Janeshwar Mishra on Thursday.
Akhilesh paddled to reach Janeshwar Mishra Park from the Samajwadi Party state headquarters, where he paid homage to the late socialist ideologue. On his nearly six kilometers cycle yatra to the park, which was flagged by his wife and former MP from Kannauj, Dimple Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav was accompanied by over a thousand enthusiastic party leaders and supporters.
Before launching the ‘Samajwadi Cycle Yatra’, the SP chief claimed that the citizens of Uttar Pradesh were so upset with the incumbent BJP government that his party might win 400 assembly seats in the 2022 state polls and the ruling party would find it difficult to field candidates on all the seats.
There are 403 assembly seats in UP and in the 2017 state elections the BJP and its ally won 325 seats while the SP could win only 47 seats.
“Till now the party has been claiming to win 350 plus seats in 2022 assembly polls in the state but now people are so upset with the BJP that Samajwadi Party might get even 400 seats. The BJP has harassed people of all sections, including Brahmins, Dalits, and Muslims, in the state,” Akhilesh said while addressing a media conference in Lucknow on Thursday.
"Even today the BJP ministers are inaugurating projects initiated by the SP government. The Yogi Adityanath government did not work at all and now they are confused. They are misleading people by spreading lies,” he said.
Responding to the BJP government claims that it had established Uttar Pradesh as a top state in the country, the SP president said that the present regime had rendered the state number one in malnutrition, number one in dead bodies found floating in the Ganga river, number one in taking off shrouds from dead bodies and number one in its failure to provide oxygen to dying patients.
He added that under the present dispensation, the state had also become number one in beating youths asking for employment, in crimes against women, in deaths due to absence of proper medical treatment and also in non-compliance with various court orders.
Akhilesh alleged that BJP politicians were busy making money.
“They do not work on 'manifesto' but on 'money festo'. We will bring a change in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 where every caste and community will be benefitted," he said.
