Lucknow: Alliance talks between the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) most likely fell through because theCongress “makes a lot of people wait” and Arvind Kejriwal may have grown tired, said Akhilesh Yadav, Samajwadi Party president.
“See, the Aam Aadmi Party and Arvind Kejriwal wanted to have an alliance with the Congress, and he wanted to work along with Congress,” he told ThePrint.
“But the Congress didn’t want to go along with him. I still have hopes that Arvind Kejriwal will be able to win goodnumber of seats. And if there’s anyone responsible — which even Arvind Kejriwal was saying — if anyone is responsible for breaking the alliance, it is the Congress,” added Akhilesh. The SP’s tie-up with the Congress for the 2017 UP assembly elections, failed to stall a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweep.
“The Congress is a good party, [but] it makes a lot of people wait. And it makes them wait for so long that they end up getting tired. Maybe that’s what happened with Arvind Kejriwal too,” he observed.
Speaking to ThePrint in an interview from the Lok Sabha campaign trail in Uttar Pradesh, the 45-year old former chief minister spoke on a host of issues, including the chances of a third front assuming office after the elections, and rival-turned-ally Mayawati’s potential to become prime minister.
Mayawati as PM?
The SP is contesting the Lok Sabha election in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Mayawati, its former arch rival, and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) of Ajit Singh. The alliance is fielding candidates from all but two of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats — Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s constituency Amethi and Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli.
Akhilesh said India may well have a non-BJP, non-Congress government after the elections.
“The situation can be that regional parties will get more seats than the Congress and the BJP,” he replied when asked if Rahul Gandhi would be the PM candidate of an opposition coalition.
Also read: To counter BJP’s winning ‘panna pramukh’ formula, Akhilesh deploys booth rakshaks across UP
Akhilesh dismissed the chances of his father and senior leader Mulayam Singh Yadav of becoming PM, but admitted that Mayawati was very much in the race.
“It is but natural, why won’t she be in the race? Although anyone from the country can become the PM, but if they are from UP, it will be a very good thing,” he said.
Akhilesh was also dismissive of claims made by Rahul and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra that the party was not cutting into the votes of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance and was only to looking to hurt the BJP’s prospects.
In fact, Yadav said, the Congress was trying to help the “BJP much more than the alliance”.
Brothers, rivals
When the two parties tied up for the 2017 polls, Rahul and Akhilesh, two of the younger faces of Indian politics, were projected as “brothers in arms”, and appeared to share a close relationship. Two years later, the situation is completely different.
Akhilesh admitted that they had grown distant “politically”: “On a personal level, our relations are not bad, but some distance has definitely seeped into our political relationship,” he added.
‘Weak government’
Akhilesh also criticised the BJP for shifting the focus of its government from development to nationalism and terrorism.
“All their (BJP’s) decisions have been wrong. They are no longer talking about Digital India, Startup India, Make in India. That’s because they have not worked at all and that’s why the BJP tries to shift the focus by talking much more on terrorism, nationalism.”
Referring to the Pulwama attack, he added, “If BJP or BJP’s PM claim that our PM is the strongest, if he was really a strong PM, then how come such incidents took place? The fact that such incidents have taken place means he is not a strong PM.”
“And at a time when we had a strong government, as they claim, at the same time that BJP leaders were giving eloquent speeches in UP on terrorism and Maoism, that same day 15 of our jawans were martyred [in Gadchiroli],” he added. “So, if under such a ‘strong government’ these incidents took place, what kind of a strong government [do] we want?”
Here’s my summation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FEbO9oKnMI
Carries conviction, measured in his speech. Still the Congress party’s best channel of communication to Behenji for the tortuous negotiations that may begin on 23rd May.
If there was somebody who was as erudite and educated as Ambedkar, most people may have supported such a dalit candidate but Mayawati has wasted a lot of money and not done well on governance even if she did improve the law/order situation somewhat – even that was not very much – as U.P’s CM.
As PM, mayawati’s kleptomania and money grabbing will reach new heights. Other than K Chandrasekhar Rao of Telangana and Naveen Patnaik of Orissa, there are no other good candidates for PMship in the third party front.