In a candid admission, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said the Samajwadi Party failed to convey the message of good work being done by his Government down to the villages leading to the ignominious defeat of the party in the lok Sabha elections.
“We failed to put our views across to the people. We failed to tell villagers about the development schemes we have launched. This led to our debacle,” Yadav told reporters in an impromptu Press conference after a Cabinet meeting here on Tuesday.
He said though the Samajwadi Party won less number of seats, but there was not much decline in the party’s vote share.
In 2009, the Samajwadi Party had won 21 lok Sabha seats while this time the party could win only five seats — all of them won by Yadav family members.
“The State Government’s scheme to distribute laptops to students, and give unemployment allowance and kanya vidyadhan and other schemes have been appreciated by all. Many Governments have copied our schemes. There is nothing wrong with our ideas. We failed because we could not reach out to the people with our achievements. This was the main reason for our defeat. We accept the peoples’ mandate and will try to rectify ourselves and learn lessons from it,” he said.
When asked about Narendra Modi’s resolve to clean up the Ganga, Yadav took a jibe and said: “We also live near Ganga maiyya. let’s see how much these rivers can be cleaned.”