NEW DELHI, 1 May 2006 — To match Rahul Gandhi’s campaigning for his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi in the prestigious Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency, Samajwadi Party has deployed Akhilesh Yadav, party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son.
Akhilesh, who like Rahul is a member of the Lok Sabha, took out a cycle rally through various parts of the constituency to counter a Congress charge that the state government headed by his father had failed to utilize federal funds meant for development of Rae Bareli.
Mulayam’s son, who rode the cycle, the election symbol of SP, sought to remove the impression created by Rahul that the state government had failed to utilize central funds for development.
Just two days ago, Rahul sought to connect with the electorate by riding a bullock cart and in a matching move it was the turn of the young Samajwadi MP to hit the dusty tracks on a bicycle.
The rally traversed about 30 km before culminating at Dalmau in Rae Bareli, where Akhilesh and former federal Minister Beni Prasad Verma urged the people to vote for the SP candidate, Raj Kumar Chowdhury. Chowdhury, a green horn in the battle of ballots, is Verma’s son-in-law.
Like Rahul, Akhilesh too held street-corner meetings to woo voters. But turnout at Akhilesh’s meetings was markedly lower. A local SP leader attributed it to the “disappointment” among senior party leaders over fielding of a worker little-known in the district. He said his party has virtually allowed Sonia Gandhi a walkover.
Voters recalled that when Mulayam Singh Yadav was in the opposition he too had carried out a similar yatra in Lucknow to protest the policies of the then Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati.
In all the meetings addressed by the SP leader, the refrain was the same: It is wrong to say that the contribution of the Uttar Pradesh government to the development of Rae Bareli is negligible.
