Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, on Wednesday, said only the SP had the grit and the determination to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh.
Akhilesh Yadav said though election results in the recent past had not been favourable, it had been proved that only his party could defeat the BJP in UP. He said the Samajwadi Party worked for a big victory but “the people in power used every trick and misused official machinery and we failed to succeed”.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the samajwadis had tried hard for a historic result. They tried to realise the dream of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia and Dr BR Ambedkar to bring the bahujan forces on one platform, the SP chief said this after inaugurating the state-level convention of the party here on Wednesday.
“In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, the SP formed an alliance in an attempt to take along with it all those struggling to remove the BJP from power. But we could not win,” he said.
“But I can say one thing that despite the experiments of 2019 and 2022, the manner in which our leaders and workers worked, the samajwadis have come to know that despite not getting success if there is anyone who can compete and defeat the BJP, it is the SP,” Yadav said.
Exhorting the party cadres to close their ranks for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Akhilesh Yadav said, “We increased our strength in terms of vote share and number of seats in UP Assembly as compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, still we have miles to go to realise our true place in the political structure of Uttar Pradesh.”
“Whenever the people of UP voted for the SP, enabling it to form the government, the state surged ahead in all spheres of development. Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) congratulated us that the SP has done a lot of work for the development of the state. During SP government projects like Lohia Park, Janeshwar Mishra Park, JP Centre, Lucknow metro rail, and Agra- Lucknow Expressway were completed. The BJP has done nothing except claiming credit for the work done by the SP government and changing the names of the projects,” Akhilesh Yadav said.
The SP had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the 2022 assembly polls in alliance with smaller parties but lost.
At the party’s convention, Naresh Uttam Patel was declared elected as SP state president again. Congratulating Naresh Uttam, SP general secretary and returning officer Ram Gopal Yadav announced that Naresh Uttam had been elected as the state president of the party. He said two sets of nomination papers were filed by Naresh Uttam.
Akhilesh Yadav is set to be elected as the national president of the party on Thursday.
Welcoming Naresh Uttam on his re-election as SP state president, Akhilesh Yadav said, “We will together face the challenges that come up. All of us will work together towards taking the socialist movement ahead. This is a big struggle. We will work together to remove from power those who are bent upon dividing the society.”
Yadav alleged that the ruling BJP had failed on all fronts and said that once the SP came to power it would work towards the betterment of the people.
The state and national convention of the SP is politically significant as the elections to urban local bodies are due in October. SP is also likely to finalise its strategy for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held in April /May 2024.
The state convention of the party also adopted political and economic resolutions. The political resolution said the conduct of the BJP posed a huge challenge for the democratic polity of the country. The resolution said the BJP had systematically sabotaged and weakened the democratic institutions. The failure of the BJP to abide by its election manifesto called Sankalp Patra was also criticised in the political resolution.
