Akhilesh Yadav | The making of a leader

New Delhi: Akhilesh Yadav, the young Samajwadi Party (SP) leader, may just have turned the electoral tide in Uttar Pradesh elections into a giant SP wave, something that his Congress counterpart Rahul Gandhi had hoped to do when he had chosen UP as his make-or-break battleground a few years back. The exit poll done by CSDS predicts that SP will emerge as the largest party in Uttar Pradesh.

Before he joined politics, Mulayam Singh Yadav's son secured a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree from Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, Mysore, affiliated to University of Mysore. He also has a Masters in environmental engineering from Sydney University though certain sources suggest that he never submitted his thesis. Akhilesh was schooled at Dholpur Military School.

The son of SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, born on July 1, 1973 in Saifai of Etawah district of the state, was first elected to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj in a by-election in 2000, a seat he would retain in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

But 2009 proved to Akhilesh that being the party's state unit president involved more than just looking suave and talking at length on environmental issues. Akhilesh contested from the Firozabad Lok Sabha seat too in 2009. He won by a margin of 67,301 votes against Bahujan Samaj Party candidate SPS Baghel. Akhilesh, having also won from Kannauj, decided to vacate the Firozabad Lok Sabha seat. It led to a by-poll. Akhilesh's wife, Dimple, contested the by-election against the Congress' star candidate, Raj Babbar.

But the campaign, anchored by Amar Singh at Akhilesh's behest, that saw Jaya Prada and Jaya Bachchan taking to the dais, failed to pacify the voters who were angered by Akhilesh dumping the seat. Raj Babbar won, and that too by more than 85,000 votes. The state party president's wife had lost the election. Amar Singh was made the scapegoat but Akhilesh had learnt his lesson – that the voters in UP have changed and would no longer readily accept someone just because he/she hailed from a particular family. He realised that with increased exposure and awareness, voters had their own dreams and aspirations.

So while Akhilesh became a workaholic on one hand, crisscrossing the length and breadth of the state to galvanise the grassroot leaders and workers and to increase the support base, on the other hand came promises of free laptops to students on the eve of the 2012 Assembly polls.

In direct contrast to Rahul Gandhi's negative campaign pitch which harped on the injustice meted out to the state's people by not only its government but also by groups in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra, Akhilesh's 'free laptop' promise brought a whiff of the aspirational 'India' to UP's 'Bharat'.

While the Congress talked about reservation for Muslims, Akhilesh talked about Urdu keyboards. Combined with this has been a steely resolve to deny tickets to candidates like DP Yadav whose 'criminal' image would have harmed the party, according to Akhilesh.

However, Akhilesh's real test will be in maintaining this positivism when it comes to governance, policy framing and implementation if SP comes to power in Lucknow.

Posted in: Politics