The stakes are high on 2017 Uttar Pradesh election results, which would trickle in from the morning of March 11.
Even as poll results would be keenly watched given that future prospect of political parties and candidates was incumbent upon them, the leader who bet highest on the election process, is UP chief minister and ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav.
He desperately needs to win for not only retaining power, but prove his detractors wrong that the 2012 poll sweep by SP was a fluke. Akhilesh also wants to prove that he possessed the required bandwidth and political wisdom to win elections even without the explicit support of this father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The country’s tallest and surviving socialist leader Mulayam had largely kept away from electioneering after he was removed from the post of SP president following a bitter power feud in SP and state government. The rift ensured that some top party leaders were booted out either by Akhilesh, the new SP chief, or they themselves quit after they were denied party tickets, including former UP ministers Ambika Chaudhary and Narad Rai.
Mulayam had publically flayed the SP-Congress pre-poll alliance saying it was not needed as the party was capable of winning the poll on its own.
Following the deep fault lines in SP, Akhilesh was pitched opposite to his uncle and Mulayam’s younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav.
Akhilesh went ahead with the pre-poll pact with Congress and addressed public rallies and roadshows with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi across UP over the last two months of hectic electioneering.
In this context, losing election would not only mean the loss of face for Akhilesh within his party and family, his much publicised plank of ‘kaam bolta hai’ (development speaks for itself) would fall flat, implying that the masses were less than impressed with his five years’ performance. Besides, the party struggle could reignite and attain newer dimensions.
Akhilesh would be solely responsible in the event of a win or a rout at the hustings.
Recently, Akhilesh’s step-mother Sadhna Gupta, in an interview to a news channel, had termed as unfortunate the SP power feud and lamented the sidelining of Shivpal by Team Akhilesh.
She expressed desire her son and Akhilesh’s step brother Prateek became a Parliamentarian, while asserting she would not take any more insults quietly.