Close on the heels of an unpleasant experience with the Congress over seat sharing for the Madhya Pradesh state assembly elections, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has called a meeting of the state executive of the party here on October 31.
Sources in the SP said the party president wants to expedite the process of selection of candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In September, the SP had announced that it would start releasing the names of the candidates during the auspicious days of Navratri. So far, there has been no progress and not one candidate has been finalised so far. The SP had planned to announce the candidates during Navratri to give a positive message to the Hindu community.
In an apparent retaliatory move which was against the spirit of the INDIA bloc comprising most of the non-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, the SP had put up a hoarding at its state office here, proclaiming Akhilesh Yadav as the future prime minister of India. However, Akhilesh Yadav later sought to play down the incident saying “merely putting up posters and hoardings does not make a person the prime minister”. Yadav had said anyone could put anyone’s poster but that does not mean he could become the prime minister.
Later on Friday, Congress, in a retaliatory move, put up a hoarding outside its state headquarters in Lucknow projecting its former president Rahul Gandhi as the prime minister in 2024 and Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Ajay Rai as the chief minister in 2027.
Besides carrying pictures of Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi, All India Congress Committee general secretary (Uttar Pradesh in-charge) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Ajay Rai, the hoarding carries pictures of other party leaders and workers too.
Like the SP president, UP Congress president Ajay Rai also played down the incident, saying this was only an expression of aspirations of Congress workers.