In the morning when Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav reached his official residence the early election trends have started giving silhouette of parties that would come to power in Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Pondicherry. He had a recording slated at 12 noon but his eyes are ears were glued to TV channel. “I am telling everyone if you perform people will vote you back to power,” he told people around him stressing on return of Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalitha to power.
Kolkata, Chennai and even Guwahati may be thousands of kilometers away from lucknow and election are fought on local issues there that find no resemblance with Uttar Pradesh, still political leaders here had their ears to every new trend as they were trying to draw positive from the poll outcome.
Akhilesh Yadav saw the value of good governance in returning of Trinamool Congress and AIADMK to power in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu respectively. Earlier, Nitish Kumar was voted back to power for third time in a row in Bihar for his `su-sashan’ (good governance). Pundits say Jayalalitha got returns in Tamil Nadu because of multitude of welfare schemes like the Amma canteen- a low cost food chain, Amma water and Amma pharmacies she had launched. Besides she also gave freebies like 20 kg rice for ration card holders, free mixers, grinders, milch cows, goats and four grams of gold for Mangalsutra.
In West Bengal Mamata concentrated on building infrastructure and provided bijli, sadak and paani. People vouch transformation of West Bengal through road network despite allegations of Sharada scam, Narda sting showing TMC leaders accepting bribe and collapse of under construction bridge at Vivekanand Marg at the heart of Kolkata.
“If you will work as per the aspiration of people they will vote you back to power. This result has cemented our belief in good governance. look what happened in Bengal and TN. We know we have fulfilled all the promises and are confident that we will retain power in UP in 2017 elections,” Samajwadi party spokesman Rajendra Chaudhry said.
Chief Minister is already harping on his government’s achievements. In public rallies he asks people to compare his achievements with the achievements of previous government. Yadav has even asked his party workers to spread out to villages and educate people about good work done by the government.
Before going for recording on Thursday CM repeated the same sentiments. “If we can tell people about our projects to people half of the battle would be won,” he said.
The Bharatiya Janata party, on the hand, has its tail up after party formed Government in Assam. Party state president Keshav Prasad Maurya said that this election result has proved that party is upswing in the country. “Now no will be able to stop us from getting our target of 265+,” BJP state chief said.
Mood of workers was up beat in party office – this despite BJP has lost both the bye-elections results which were declared on Thursday. In Jangipur and Billari party candidate came second to ruling Samajwadi Party. “We came second so what our poll percentage has increased in both these constituencies,” BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said. “Our real battle is in 2017. Result of five states has given new energy to party workers. Now we know we can do it,” he said.
Congress on the other hand can learn a lesson how to choose its ally. In UP if Congress nurtures a dream to form government it has to choose its ally partner judiciously. “A wrong ally can jeopardy Congress ambition as it happened in West Bengal,” a senior Congress leader said who did not wish to be named.