Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav speaks during a public meeting in support of his wife and SP candidate for Mainpuri by-election Dimple Yadav, in Mainpuri district, Monday, Nov. 28, 2022.
| Photo Credit: PTI
The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Tuesday hit back at the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath over his ‘pendulum’ jibe at Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohiya president Shivapal Singh Yadav, with the party chief and former U.P. CM Akhilesh Yadav leading the charge cautioning the BJP that ‘no one should be arrogant as time changes’. “Pendulum, indicates changing times. It highlights nothing is permanent,hence no one should be arrogant about it,” wrote Mr. Yadav on social networking site Twitter.
Earlier on November 28, during a campaign meeting under Karhal assembly segment which falls under Mainpuri Lok Sabha Mr. Adityanath purportedly referring to Shivpal Singh said, “He has become something like a pendulum, or a football that gets kicked by both teams. We saw how last time he was insulted on stage through denial of a chair and had to sit on the arm of a chair.” Karhal is represented by the SP supermo in the U.P. assembly.
In his speech the CM asked voters to support the BJP nominee Raghuraj Singh Shakya, a two-term Lok Sabha member from adjoining Etawah. “Development of Mainpuri can gain momentum if the local leadership is also from the BJP,” added Mr. Adityanath while alleging during SP’s rule, the state was under the control of the land and mining mafias which had been nurtured by the party.
The Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat considered stronghold of the SP, as it has won every parliamentary election since 1996 is witnessing an aggressive campaign by both the parties with the entire top leadership and rank and file of the SP engaged in a door to door while the BJP has also put its organisational mechanism for campaigning in the bypoll including the CM. SP’s candidate for the prestigious seat is Dimple Yadav, the daughter-in-law of the SP founder and five-term parliamentarian from the seat late Mulayam Singh Yadav, who’s demise necessitated the bypoll.
The relatively closer result of 2019 polls where the saffron party polled more than three lakh votes and lost by less than one lakh votes and recent successes in Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha bypolls, both seats considered the SP’s stronghold is giving hope to the BJP of breaching the citadel of the SP.