A direct electoral contest between the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is very much on the cards in UP elections.
LUCKNOW: A direct electoral contest between the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is very much on the cards in the upcoming UP Assembly elections.
However, the similarity ends there. The leaders of both the parties — SP president and UP CM Mulayam Singh Yadav, and BSP chief Mayawati — are poles apart in the pitch and content of their campaigns. While the firebrand Mayawati has been scorchingly offensive, Mulayam is strikingly subdued and defensive.
“As soon as my government is voted to power, the first thing I will do as Chief Minister is to send Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh to jail,” blared Mayawati at a party rally in Etawah on Tuesday. She addressed a rally of about one lakh people in the heart of Mulayam Singh’s home turf. She came about four hours late and despite the blazing heat, the huge crowd waited patiently.
“Mafias are having a free run in UP and development funds have been siphoned off. Mulayam and Amar Singh will flee abroad after the elections but I will not spare them,” she said, inviting a thunderous round of applause.
Around the same time, Mulayam, addressing a public meeting in Bareilly, is at pains to explain that his trusted lieutenant Beni Prasad Verma’s desertion on election eve would not hurt the party’s prospects.
Other subjects that take up most of his speech include how the Congress is hatching a conspiracy against him and that he really doesn’t have any disproportionate assets.
“The Congress Party will impose President’s Rule in UP to prevent the SP from coming to power,” Mulayam said at another rally in Lakhimpur Kheri on Tuesday.
In all his election meetings, Mulayam repeatedly stresses how the Congress was raising the disproportionate assets case bogey against him. He sounds desperate as he appeals, “Return us to power just one more time, else the Congress will send me and my family members to jail.”
However, people and political experts alike are at a loss to understand why the SP chief expends most of his energies on the Congress which is not a worthy electoral opponent by any stretch of imagination.
Interestingly, while Mayawati fires salvos at Mulayam, the wrestler CM studiously abstains from even mentioning her name, leave alone attacking her, though the Taj corridor project scam in which she is facing a CBI inquiry is a major chink in her armour.
Both party leaders start their day early and heli-hop across the state everyday.
While Mayawati restricts her schedule to two rallies per day, Mulayam addresses at least four.
Mayawati mostly addresses one public meeting in a district where all her candidates converge while Mulayam has been going to each Vidhan Sabha constituency. This, say
pollsters, reflects ‘Madam’s’ confidence and ‘Netaji’s’ desperation.
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