Why Akhilesh’s remark on Amethi caused a flutter
A recent tweet by Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav is being seen as an indication of the party fielding its own candidate for the high-profile Amethi Lok Sabha seat in 2024. The hint came at a time when it is uncertain whether Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who lost the seat to the BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019, will contest from here in the general elections next year.
“VIPs have always won and lost here, and yet the condition of Amethi is such. If this is the case, what to say of the rest of the state? Next time, Amethi will not elect big people but those who have large hearts. The SP takes a pledge to eradicate poverty from Amethi,” Akhilesh tweeted.
That all may not be well between the SP and the Congress in Uttar Pradesh is seen as one of the reasons behind Akhilesh pitching for a third front. At least three statements by him in the past one week suggest that the party is trying to build a third front ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
As per SP sources, Akhilesh is keen on a non-Congress, non-BJP third front at the national level, and has been meeting leaders, such as Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav, Telangana CM K. Chandrashekar Rao, Tamil Nadu CM M.K. Stalin and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar. However, it will be too early to say if Akhilesh is planning the same in UP, where the SP is already in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and other smaller parties.
UP Congress chief Brijlal Khabri, reacting to Akhilesh’s statement, said SP MLAs from the Amethi area were hobnobbing with BJP leaders and praising them while their party chief was talking on a different plane.
A senior SP functionary told INDIA TODAY that their party may not field a candidate if Rahul or anyone from the Gandhi family contests from Amethi in 2024. One section in the SP, however, wants a party challenger to be fielded against Rahul and Irani because of the sizeable population of Yadavs and Muslims in Amethi.
The SP-BSP alliance had not fielded any candidate against the Congress in Amethi (Rahul Gandhi) and Rae Bareli (Sonia Gandhi) in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. While Rahul, who had held the Amethi seat for 15 years, lost to Irani by over 50,000 votes, Sonia won from Rae Bareli, making her the sole Congress MP from a state that sends 80 MPs (the highest) to the Lok Sabha.
The question is whether Rahul, now an MP from Wayanad in Kerala, would return to Amethi to challenge Irani or anyone the BJP may field. “We are hopeful Rahul Gandhi will contest from Amethi because it is his home turf. There is huge anti-incumbency against Smriti Irani. The SP and BSP are in no contention in Amethi. It’s a Congress bastion,” a senior Congress leader told INDIA TODAY. He claimed Akhilesh’s statement was a pressure tactic as he wanted the Congress to fight the Lok Sabha elections in UP under the SP umbrella.
SP leaders, on the other hand, claim their party was in no mood of any alliance with the Congress, and this is why Akhilesh was attacking both the BJP and the Congress.
