Chastised by defeats in four successive elections despite forging new alliances, the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) is cautiously preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, including trips to religious places. To communicate the party's message to its workers, the party recently organised training camps in Lakhimpur and Sitapur, where Akhilesh and all other top leaders addressed the gathering. The SP chief performed aarti at Naimisharanya, a prominent Hindu pilgrimage in Sitapur district, and took a jibe at the ruling BJP, which regularly alleges that the SP is adopting a “soft Hindutva” line. “Hum log pehle se hi bahut soft hain. Bas ab hard hone ki zaroorat hai. Yeh soft ka mamla chalne wala nahin hai (We were already very soft, but now we need to become hard. This softness is not going to work),” Akhilesh said. If SP leaders have refrained from visiting the under-construction Ram temple in Ayodhya so far, the party seems to be ready to embrace the Hindu God wholeheartedly as well. On Saturday, SP general secretary Shivpal Singh Yadav unveiled a bronze idol of Ram at Ramlila Tiraha in his Assembly constituency of Jaswant Nagar in Etawah district. Shivpal also performed an aarti of the idol, which has been installed by Jaswant Nagar Palika, and said, "Ram sabke hain (Ram belongs to all)." SP is also organising training camps for its workers, after a gap of a long time. These camps will be held in all 80 Lok Sabha constituencies of UP, with Akhilesh's Lok Jagran Yatra passing through each. Quite like the “Samajwadi Vijay Yatra” Akhilesh held ahead of the 2022 Assembly elections, in which the SP improved its tally significantly, he kicked off the Lok Jagran Yatra from Lakhimpur earlier this month with the slogans of “samajik nyay” and "jaatiya jan ganana” (social justice and caste census), focusing on OBC voters. At a meeting of workers at the SP state headquarters in Lucknow on Thursday, Akhilesh sought an end to groupism, urging them to prepare for the polls with “ek jutata, nishtha, imaandari (unity, dedication and honesty)". As part of its poll strategy of constituency-specific plans, it has finished collecting information on the performance of MPs of rival parties on each seat and got the feedback from its district presidents on its organisational strengths and weaknesses. While Akhilesh is himself meeting district organisational units to discuss each seat, there are also, for the first time, dedicated in-charges per Lok Sabha constituency. Inactive workers have been weeded out and new "zonal units” created, party leaders said. “In past elections, including bypolls in which the SP lost to the BJP, names of SP supporters were found missing from electoral rolls. The BJP misused power to defeat the SP. The in-charges will keep a watch on updates in electoral rolls to ensure that all eligible voters are added to the list,” a party leader said. SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said, “The party does not want to leave anything to chance for 2024.” In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the SP had contested in alliance with the BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. While the BSP had won 10 seats, the SP had won only five. At present, the SP has only three MPs in the Lok Sabha, after losing Rampur and Azamgarh to the BJP in recent bypolls.
