Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav stunned his friends and foes alike on Tuesday with his party cutting the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party down to size in Uttar Pradesh.
As trends and results poured in till late in the evening, the SP had won 38 seats and the Congress six while the BJP could manage only 32.
Along with candidates of INDIA bloc, all five members from the first family of the SP, including Akhilesh Yadav, won from Kannauj, Mainpuri, Azamgarh, Budaun and Firozabad.
The unprecedented rise in SP’s tally is a huge spoiler for the BJP, which claimed to be sweeping the state, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an MP.
From winning five seats in 2019 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the SP has dealt a body blow to the BJP which had won 62 seats on its own in 2019.
Born on July 1, 1973, Akhilesh Yadav led the opposition’s campaign from the front in the key political state, pairing well with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.
This was the first general election after the death of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Akhilesh did not disappoint, to the extent that the party has won on more seats than it won in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.
The turnaround for the opposition came even as Akhilesh, along with Rahul Gandhi, was disparaged as ‘Do ladko ki jodi’ by his rivals, including Prime Minister Modi.
The acronym PDA — Pichchde (backward classes), Dalits and Alpsankhyak (minorities) — coined by Akhilesh appears to have worked for the party.
Much to the discomfiture of the BJP, the SP has also won Faizabad Lok Sabha seat where the Ram temple is located. The SP had fielded a Dalit, Avadesh Prasad, against Lallu Singh of the BJP.
TMC, another INDIA bloc ally, was given the Bhadohi Lok Sabha seat in UP. The BJP, however, won this seat.
Akhilesh, in his speeches, decried the BJP for arresting and jailing Arvind Kejriwal, as well as JMM leader and former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, to highlight the BJP’s high-handedness. He praised Lalu Prasad and his son Tejaswi Yadav, who were in charge of holding the alliance’s fort in Bihar.
Earlier, in the campaign, Akhilesh forced the BJP to recalibrate its narrative, somewhat even sending it on a back foot, when he retorted to the ruling party’s jibe of nepotism, saying those with no family had no right to call out others. The rebuttal sent entire BJP brass, as well as its grassroots workers, to append ‘Modi ka Parivaar’ in their social media accounts.
The party’s performance also indicates a strong support from the state’s Muslim population.
Ahead of the elections, Akhilesh forged a rapprochement with uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav, who helped the party reach out to its traditional voters, most of them from the Yadavs, spread over in the eastern and central parts of the state.
A break from its former partner, Bahujan Samaj Party did no harm to the SP, which called it the ‘B-team’ of the BJP.
The SP had given 17 seats to Congress, one to TMC, and had fielded its own candidates in the rest of the total 67. UP has total 80 Lok Sabha constituencies.
Born in the Yadav’s native village of Saifai in Etawah district, Akhilesh Yadav studied at the Dholpur Military School in Rajasthan. He got his bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from Mysore University and followed it up by doing masters from Sydney.
In 2000, he was elected to the Lok Sabha in a bye-election from Kannauj. He won again in 2004 and 2009. As Uttar Pradesh chief minister, in a departure from the party’s earlier stance against computers, he launched the biggest laptop distribution scheme for students.
His government also took credit for launching development projects like the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, Metro project, international stadium and cancer hospital in Lucknow.
