'A Year Older But...': Akhilesh Yadav's Comeback To Adityanath Jab

LUCKNOW: Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, who has been on the receiving end after the party's disastrous performance in the assembly election, gave it back on Saturday, starting with his successor Yogi Adityanath who had taken a potshot at him for the decision to ally with the Congress. Mr Yadav said the Chief Minister was older than him but wasn't a patch on him.

"The Chief Minister has said he is one year older than me. I say you (Adityanath) may be older in age but are far behind in terms of work," Mr Yadav told reporters, the punch was his counter to Mr Adityanath's jab in Lok Sabha earlier this week. And this was just the beginning as he went to review Mr Adityanath's first week in office. In between, he also took swipes at bureaucrats too who have been falling over each other to please the new boss.

Mr Adityanath had taken a potshot at the Rahul-Akhilesh alliance - inked by generation next of the two parties - during his farewell speech in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. "I am a year younger than Rahul Gandhi and a year older than Akhilesh Yadav. I came between their jodi (alliance). That is why they failed in UP," the Chief Minister had quipped to roars of laughter from the treasury benches in the House.

Mr Yadav was speaking after the Samajwadi Party's national executive in Lucknow, the first party meet after its humiliating defeat in the assembly elections. The party ended up with 47 seats, second after the BJP's 312 in the 403-seat house. The Congress - that contested a little over 100 seats as part of the Akhilesh-Rahul alliance - could win only 7 seats. The executive spent most of its time discussing the future; there weren't any discordant voices to question the alliance. His father Mulayam Singh Yadav and uncle Shivpal Yadav had given the meeting a miss.

"I am waiting for the new Bharatiya Janata Party led by Yogi Adityanath to come with something concrete," Mr Yadav, also the Samajwadi Party president, said. As of now, all that there is to see on television are cleanliness drives in government offices and the anti-Romeo campaign, he said.

Suggesting that suspension of over a 100 policemen over the last week probably had something to do with political signalling than administration, Mr Yadav wondered why only policemen from a particular caste were being suspended. The reference to the caste of the policemen was in context of allegations faced by the Samajwadi Party during its stint in power that policemen from the Yadav community were given prize postings.

Turning to bureaucrats who have picked up brooms to get on the political executive's right side, Mr Yadav said he didn't know "these officials are so good at wielding brooms, or else, I would have given them this charge long back."

Known for his organisational skills back home in Gorakhpur that gave him five straight wins in Lok Sabha elections, Yogi Adityanath has been focusing on building a reputation of a hard task master and an administrator as well. On his first day, Mr Adityanath ordered the police to crackdown on roadside romeos - reference to young men who harass women on the streets. It hasn't exactly gone according to script; there have been complaints that innocents have also been harassed due to policemen who went on an overdrive. He has also managed to start the exercise to shut down slaughterhouses, not just those operating without a licence but big licensed units as well that slaughtered buffaloes.