Akhilesh making on-the-spot visits to step up attack on govt

: With a view to intensifying his attack on the state government over incidents of crime, Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav has started making on-the-spot visits to meet the kin of the victims of such incidents.

Akhilesh, the Leader of Opposition in Uttar Pradesh Assembly, has also been visiting jails to meet “political prisoners” of his party.

On Wednesday (May 11), the former chief minister went to Azamgarh district jail to meet the SP workers. These workers were arrested over their protest at the FCI godown a day before the counting of votes for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in March.

On Monday (May 9), he went to Varanasi jail and met “the jailed SP workers who had protested over the anomalies in the transportation of electronic voting machines during the elections”.

Shortly before that, Akhilesh had been to Chandauli district where he met the family of the girl who had allegedly died “because of police thrashing during a raid at gangster’s Kanhiya Yadav (the deceased was the gangster’s daughter) in Manrajpur village”.

On May 5, the SP chief visited Lalitpur where he met the family of a girl who was first allegedly raped by some youth and when she went to lodge her complain at a police station, a cop also allegedly outraged her modesty. On April 24, Akhilesh had visited the family of an Amethi woman cop who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in her official quarters on April 22.

“It is a positive step on his (Akhilesh’s) part. If a top leader himself goes to spots and meets aggrieved people instead of sending a party delegation, it is a good leadership sign. It helps in connecting the leader and the party with the masses. Such a thing strengthens the party and boosts the morale of the party workers. In a democratic set-up, leaders must be active like this instead of sitting at homes or at their offices,” said Prof SK Dwivedi, a political analyst and former head of political science department, Lucknow University.

Wherever he goes, Akhilesh now holds on-the-spot informal press conferences attacking the government over law and order and other issues.

Before going on on-the-spot tours to various districts, Akhilesh had primarily been sending party delegations to various districts to probe incidents of crime and submit reports. “When such a thing is missing in a top leader, it does not create any substantial public connect,” opined Dwivedi.

In the last month’s Rae Bareli incident of a Dalit boy forced to lick feet by some upper caste youth, Akhilesh had met the boy at the SP’s Lucknow office instead of visiting the spot.