Prepare for Mission 2019, Samajwadi Party tells cadres

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party seems to be jumping the gun. The party has come up with posters in Lucknow that ask party cadres to prepare to the big fight in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The tag line in these hoardings and posters says, “Repetition 2017, Mission 2019”. Some hoardings portray the three top SP leaders, namely Mulayam Singh Yadav, Shivpal Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav, to the divine trinity of Brahma Vishnu and Mahesh.

The posters clustered around the office and residences of the top SP leadership have already unleashed speculation about the Samajwadis’ gameplan.

“It seems that the SP leaders want to give a miss to the Assembly elections in 2017 and aim directly at 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Either the party is over-confident of its performance in 2017 or is too well aware of the ground realities,” said a senior political analyst.

SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary had another explanation to offer and said, “The people of Uttar Pradesh are sure to re-elect the SP government in the 2017 Assembly elections as it has fulfilled most of the promises made in the last Assembly polls and that will set the tone for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Hence we are now working for the next general elections.”

Interestingly, none of the posters projects Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav as the next Prime Minister of the country.

“There is no need to cry about this from rooftops because he will emerge as the next prime ministerial candidate after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls,” said Samajwadi leader Dharmanand Tiwari, one of the key persons behind the billboard campaign.

Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, after the Janata Parivar fiasco in Bihar, has been keeping a low profile about his ambitions in national politics. Instead, he has been motivating party workers to work for the 2017 Assembly elections and not be too complacent about the party’s performance.

The Samajwadi Party has already opted out of the panchayat elections, citing multiplicity of candidates as the main reason. The party has paved the way for a free-for-all situation and has asked all the aspirants to contest the panchayat polls.

UP minister Arvind Singh Gope, who is also the party’s general secretary, said that there was no doubt about the SP returning to power in 2017 because CM Akhilesh Yadav has fulfilled the promises made in the 2012 manifesto.

“Besides, the manner in which the NDA government is getting exposed on all fronts, the SP will be a force to reckon with after the next Lok Sabha elections under the leadership of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav,” he said.