Akhilesh looking for overseas poll manager for SP for 2017?

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh chief mini ster Akhilesh Yadav, who took on the mantle of poll manager of Samajwadi Party (SP) and totally overhauled the method of electoral battles successfully in 2012, is reportedly looking for professional help to manage his party’s 2017 campaign.

Giving credence to this was his meeting with Prof Gerald J Austin, who has been a part of the past several Presidential campaigns in the US, on Saturday, during which the two discussed UP’s electoral pattern, sparking whispers that Akhilesh is roping in Prof Gerald to manage his party’s 2017 campaign.

Ohio, from where Professor Gerald comes, is a politically important US state, much in the same manner as UP is for India. Ohio emerged as the firewall in the elections for Obama.

“Ohio and UP share this unique similarity of holding the key to political power at the Centre, so I believe it’s this peculiarity that brought the man who has been in to presidential campaigns since 1968 to UP,” said a member of Professor Gerald’s team.

A source privy to the details of the meeting between the two said, “During the meeting strategies for the upcoming assembly election in 2017 in UP and the general election slated in 2019 were discussed in UP’s context. It was Professor Gerald’s first visit to India and naturally to UP, which he made via Mumbai.”

Prof Gerald, who left for the Netherlands after the meeting with Akhilesh, has worked with Jimmy Carter, who served as the 39th president of the United States, and and has been active in conducting student programmes too.

Both Akhilesh and his father SP national chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had misjudged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election juggernaut in 2014 which had professional multinational campaign managing company on board.

Under Akhilesh’s campaign leadership, the SP for the first time attained full majority winning 223 seats of the 403 Assembly seats in the state in 2012. But in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the party won only five of the total 80 seats in the state. Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies took away 73.

“He had totally refurbished the party outfit and campaign styles with hi-tech rath, sleek hoardings, dress code for party leaders and workers, songs, ring-tones, sophisticated video and audio ads in 2012. He had hired a couple of professional companies to design and produce some of those. But the 2012 model proved obsolete in 2014. Modi outclassed us,” says a team-Akhilesh SP leader.

Prof Gerald was a member of the international delegation who witnessed Marcos/Aquino election in the Philippines, the Pinochet Plebiscite in Chile and was an advisor to the SDLP in Northern Ireland when they beat Gerry Adams for the MP seat in Belfast.

He is author of “Incredible Tales from The Campaign Trail.”

OHIO, FROM WHERE PROF GERALD COMES, IS A POLITICALLY IMP US STATE, MUCH IN THE SAME MANNER AS UP IS FOR INDIA