Farmers Movement Archive

UP foregone conclusion, real surprise in Gujarat: Akhilesh Yadav

GHAZIABAD: Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav and his alliance partner, Rashtriya Lok Dal’s (RLD) Jayant Chaudhary, launched a joint attack on BJP at a joint press conference on Saturday, saying the saffron party was behaving like a wrestler who has lost the bout, and people would teach a lesson to those who honour the killers of Mahatma Gandhi. “BJP is nervous and behaving like the wrestler who loses, who sometimes pulls and sometimes bites,” Akhilesh said. Stepping up the ante, with BJP intensifying its outreach to the Jat community in western UP, the former CM said it wasn’t UP but Gujarat that goes to polls later this year, which will throw up the “real surprise”. BJP has won the last six assembly elections in Gujarat. “Every section in UP has accepted that an SP-RLD coalition government is going to be formed in the state,” Akhilesh said. With UP CM Yogi Adityanath repeatedly raking up tickets to candidates with criminal backgrounds in the SP-RLD list, Akhilesh countered by saying there were 82 BJP candidates who have cases against them. There will be no riots and no one is above the law, said the former CM, who has also been targeted by BJP for the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. Flanked by eight candidates of Gautam Budh Nagar and Ghaziabad, the two leaders said the “arrogant” BJP was forced to bow before the farmers’ year-long agitation against the Centre’s three farm laws. With a bundle of grains in their hands, the two leaders took an “anna sankalp” (pledge) to defeat BJP in the elections and raised slogans of “Bhaichara Zindabad’ (long live brotherhood). They also announced the launch of Samajwadi Thali for Rs 10 and subsidised general stores for the poor.

The Times of India

2022-01-30