Lucknow:
Akhilesh Yadav has thanked UP for voting for the Samajwadi Party across caste and community lines and giving it a majority. "UP accepted the manifesto we placed in their midst and we will implement this manifesto for the prosperity of the state," the young SP leader, who led the UP campaign from the front, promised, adding "anyone meddling with law and order will not be spared."
And much has changed in the life of Akhilesh Yadav, but not that one assertion. "Mulayam Singh Yadav will be the UP Chief Minister," said the rising son. SP MLAs, Mr Yadav said, would meet tomorrow to decide on the modalities of government formation. Akhilesh Yadav is being credited with winning his father that fourth term as Chief Minister. His party is now leading in 222 seats in UP, the best performance by any single party since 1991.
In victory, Akhilesh refuses comment on the rivals he bested. He will not talk about Rahul Gandhi. He will not talk about Mayawati either, though he confirms that the very expensive and very large stone elephants and statues of Dalit leaders, including those of her, will not be pulled down by the SP. "We may look at building a hospital in the space not used in the Lucknow memorial park," Mr Yadav said.
Earlier, Mr Yadav stepped out of his party's Lucknow office to be greeted by a sea of joyous supporters, song, dance and colour. As a supporter crowned him with a pagdi, other shouted, "Akhilesh has shown there is no other youth leader." Yadav Junior, who attempted a successful image makeover for the SP, is the man of the moment but chooses to underplay his role, "The entire party worked hard and won," he says, thanking the people for "believing in the SP...people across caste and community voted for the SP," he said.
Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party is a 2012 coinage. For as long as the party has existed it has been Mulayam Singh Yadav's SP. That changed with the UP elections, when Yadav Jr, 38, took charge of the party's effort to wrest the state back from his father's bete noire Mayawati. With a majority in the bag, Akhilesh Yadav can allow himself a smile and say - mission accomplished.
Akhilesh Yadav said yesterday that he believed in God, but not in religious rituals and so was not sending up fervent prayers for victory. He said he had faith in the party's gritty electoral fight to remove the BSP from power; personally that translated into a 10,000-km yatra, 800 rallies in UP over the last six months and a systematic attempt at an image makeover for his Samajwadi Party, all of which have paid off.
Yesterday, Mulayam Singh Yadav refused to talk post-poll alliances because he said he was convinced his party would manage the 202 seats needed for a simple majority in the 403-seat UP Assembly. He has not spoken today; Mr Yadav has said he will not talk at all till results are out. For now, the dancing crowds of SP supporters at the SP office in Lucknow are eloquent.
As Akhilesh wrote the UP script, he had his task cut out. The party has for long had a lawless image, attacked as a "party of goons" by opponents and Akhilesh Yadav set about attempting to change that. He insisted on hand-picking candidates unmindful of whose feet he stepped on, famously keeping the likes of DP Yadav away. Through his campaign he talked law and order as his party's foremost agenda.
He had other challenges. Three years ago, before the 2009 General Elections, the SP had said it was against the use of English and the use of computers. By 2012, the SP manifesto was the first to promise laptops and tablets for students who completed school-leaving. The manifesto is forward looking with an accent of education. Among the many changes the younger Yadav is credited with, is bringing in more young, educated professionals into his party.
Mr Yadav has been high on visibility in these elections. The red Gandhi cap, white kurta pyjama and black sleeveless jacket have been ubiquitous as Akhilesh dashed to every corner of the state.
Akhilesh Yadav wears his party's socialist roots on his sleeve. The son-of-the-soil image of the Samajwadi Party's UP president has been cultivated with care and he does not let it flag at this, his moment in the sun.
He cut his teeth in politics early. He schooled at the Sainik School in Dhaulpur, Rajasthan, and then acquired a degree in civil environment engineering from the Mysore University. He finished a Masters in environmental engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1998 and was contemplating taking up water pollution projects when his father drafted him into politics.
Electioneering meant leading youth of the party on a bicycle, his party's political symbol, on the dust-tracks of UP; he was 27 when he entered the Lok Sabha first, winning from Kannauj in 2000, when his father Mulayam Singh vacated the seat having won two - Mainpuri and Kannauj. Mr Yadav has been the Kannauj MP since.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections Akhilesh too contested two seats and won both. He kept Kannauj and gave up Ferozabad. Six months later, when wife Dimple contested by-elections from Ferozabad, she was soundly defeated by the Congress' Raj Babbar, a former Samajwadi Party man. The SP had thought this was a sitter; the Congress made it a prestige battle, with Rahul Gandhi leading a pantheon of leaders to campaign for Mr Babbar.
A vital lesson was learnt - there are no free lunches.