Akhilesh-Mulayam patch up fails
Opinion poll shows SP ahead of rivals
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday reached out to his father and Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, but sources close to him said a rapprochement was possible only on Akhilesh’s terms, which include Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh be sacked from the party, his list of candidates is accepted, and his uncle Shivpal Yadav shifted to Delhi.
Meanwhile, Mayawati, the chief of SP’s principal rival Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), released her party’s list of 403 candidates for the coming Assembly polls. She appealed to Muslims, who make up nearly a fifth of UP’s electorate, not to ‘waste’ their precious votes on SP.
In Delhi, a top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said the crowd at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public rally in Lucknow indicated his party would come back to power in Lucknow after 14 years. According to him, Muslim votes in the state would split between the BSP and SP. But, an opinion poll by television channel ABP News on Tuesday showed that Akhilesh remained the most popular leader in UP — in fact, even more popular than the PM.
Akhilesh’s meeting with Mulayam at the latter’s residence on Tuesday lasted for three hours. According to sources, the Akhilesh camp rejected the compromise formula by Mulayam and stuck to its demands that the CM’s list of 403 candidates be accepted, Shivpal be out of UP affairs of the party, and Amar Singh be sacked from the party.
Sources in the Akhilesh camp said it was “too late” for any patch up. Shivpal also joined the meeting.
In the morning, Rajya Sabha member Ram Gopal Yadav, the leading light of the Akhilesh camp, along with other leaders, told the Election Commission that the party was headed by Akhilesh and had the right over the ‘bicycle’ election symbol. On Monday, Mulayam had approached the EC to lay claim to the election symbol. The EC, if the warring factions don’t reach a truce, could freeze the symbol and ask them to contest the elections on other symbols. The Akhilesh camp could take ‘motorcycle’ as its new election symbol.
In a press conference in Lucknow, BSP chief Mayawati called the central government’s note ban as the “darkest chapter” in independent India’s history. She said Modi’s speech on Monday betrayed his acceptance of defeat.
Giving caste-wise details, she said that of the 403 seats that the BSP is contesting, “85 are reserved for the scheduled castes and 87 tickets have been given to Dalits, 97 to Muslims, 106 to other backward classes, 113 to upper castes (66 to Brahmins, 36 to Kshatriyas and 11 to Kayasthas, Vaishyas, Punjabis)”. Mayawati ruled out any alliance in the coming polls.
The ABP News opinion poll, conducted across 65 Assembly constituencies of UP from December 6 to 16, found that the SP could win 141-151 seats, BJP 129-139 seats, BSP 93-103 seats and the Congress 13-19 seats. It said the SP would get a vote share of 30 per cent, followed by the BJP’s 27 per cent.