Eye on 2024, Akhilesh set to kick off UP tour to galvanise SP, connect with voters

SP sources said Akhilesh will kick off his statewide tour in February or March following the end of the Budget Session of the UP Assembly.

SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said the party chief will tour all the districts of UP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls to “hold dialogue with public and party workers”. Chaudhary said when Akhilesh recently visited several jails in various districts to meet the party leaders who have been lodged there, he also held meetings with local party leaders and workers besides interacting with people.

“For the 2024 polls Akhilesh will have to focus on larger swathes of UP as the party does not have an alliance with any big party like the BSP this time. He will have to make extra efforts to reach out to voters of all sections including non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits. The challenge is bigger for Akhilesh because the SP does not have any other prominent face to reach out to non-Yadav voters,” said a party leader.

SP sources said Akhilesh himself can contest the Lok Sabha election from Kannauj if his wife Dimple Yadav re-contests from the Mainpuri seat that she recently won in the bypoll necessitated by sitting MP and party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav’s demise.

In the 2019 polls, the SP had managed to win just five seats, with key members of the Yadav family losing the election. Dimple had then lost from Kannauj seat, Akhilesh’s cousin Dharmendra Yadav lost Badaun while his another cousin Akshay Yadav, son of senior party leader Ramgopal Yadav, suffered defeat in Firozabad.

Subsequently, BSP supremo Mayawati broke up the alliance with Akhilesh. Her party had fared better than the SP in the polls, winning 10 of 38 seats it contested.

Of the five seats that the SP had won in the 2019 polls, the party lost the Azamgarh and Rampur seats to the BJP in bypolls held in June last year. While the Azamgarh seat was vacated by Akhilesh himself, Rampur was vacated by senior party leader Azam Khan after they were elected in the UP Assembly polls early last year.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls too, the SP had won just 5 seats in UP, although the party had then contested 78 seats.

Akhilesh was elected as the SP national president for the consecutive third time in September last year but he has not announced the party’s national officer-bearers as yet. Similarly, the party’s UP unit chief Naresh Uttam has not appointed the state party office-bearers so far.

SP sources said before embarking on his statewide tour Akhilesh is expected to constitute the party’s national executive committee as well as UP’s state executive committee. The functionaries and members of these committees will be entrusted with the responsibilities to execute the party’s election plan on the ground.

Sources said the party is likely to give more representation to non-Yadav OBCs, Dalits and Muslim as compared to Yadavs in both the committees as part of its scaled-up outreach to these communities.

Chaudhary said, “The names of SP’s national and state teams have been finalised and the party president is going to announce them very soon.”

It is not clear now whether the SP will have a tie-up with any other party besides its current ally RLD for the 2024 polls.

Akhilesh will be on a two-day visit to Telangana beginning Tuesday to attend a mega rally being organised by Telangana Chief Minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao.

Chaudhary said Rao’s rally will be a platform for the non-BJP and non-Congress parties. “It will be premature to call it Third Front. But it will be an important event ahead of the Lok Sabha elections,” he said.

Sources said Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) has also shown interest in contesting the Lok Sabha polls in UP in alliance with the SP.

Meanwhile, the ruling BJP has already started its Lok Sabha election preparations in UP in full swing, with the party’s several Union ministers having already toured the state’s 16 constituencies where the party had lost in the 2019 polls. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president J P Nadda will start touring these constituencies from later this month.