After the crushing defeat of his party in Lok Sabha election, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav candidly admitted that opposition parties were no match to the prowess of the Bharatiya Janata Party in deflecting the attention of the masses from pressing issues and shifting the focus on issues they desired.
“From now on, you should dream for bigger battles of 2022 and 2024, then only you will succeed. There is no other option in politics. The goals of politics of struggle can be achieved only by setting big targets. You will get nothing by eyeing small targets. So start preparing for the battles of 2022 and 2024,” said Akhilesh while addressing a public meeting in Azamgarh on Monday.
Akhilesh’s visit to Azamgarh was for thanking the voters of the constituency for electing him to the Lok Sabha with a record margin. His father Mulayam Singh Yadav had won from Azamgarh constituency in 2014.
“The recent Lok Sabha elections were a race between a Ferrari and a cycle. We lack the skills to divert public attention. We could not get across our message to the people for whom we were fighting. We could not fight the battle for the deprived and disadvantaged sections. The BJP has the skills to spin the mood and attention of people at will and people believe them,” the SP chief said.
“The BJP maligned our tie-up with the Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal as an alliance of Yadavs, Jats, Muslims and Dalits. But we could not convince our core voters and convey our message to them,” he said..
“We could not decipher the war strategy. They rigged our mind, whichever TV channel you switched on, it was only Modi everywhere and our voters could not see through the game,” the SP chief added.
Asking voters to identify their enemy, the SP chief said, “Our battle is not with Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’, who is a Bhojpuri film actor. They rigged our mind by fielding ‘Nirahua’.”