"Hit Century In 1st 2 Phases, Another In Next Two": Akhilesh Yadav To NDTV

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said his party has "hit a century" in the first two phases, as Uttar Pradesh votes in the third phase today. Fifty-nine seats across 16 districts are going to polls today, of which the SP had won only nine in 2017. The BJP had won 49 seats.

"We have hit a Century in first two phases and even in the next two phases, the Samajwadi Party alliance will be ahead of everyone else," Akhilesh Yadav, seen as the big challenger of the state's ruling BJP, told NDTV today after casting his vote in Jaswantnagar.

Asserting that this phase will see the maximum amount of voting, he said most of the seats going to polls this time are from Bundelkhand.

"The maximum number of unemployed youths are here. The maximum number of labourers who came back during lockdown and suffered, are here. The income of farmers has not doubled. From Bundelkhand till here, the BJP has stopped development, snatched jobs," he added.  

In the battle for Uttar Pradesh -- said to be the semi-final before the general election of 2024 -- 113 seats went to polls in the first two phases. A chunk of them were from the crucial western Uttar Pradesh, the hub of farmers' protest, who, Mr Yadav has claimed, will not forgive the ruling party.

The Samajwadi chief has supplemented his Muslim-Yadav support base with small parties that command a following among the Other Backward Classes. His key ally is Jat leader Jayant Chaudhary, whose Rashtriya Lok Dal is said to have influence on more than 30 seats of western Uttar Pradesh.

In a first, Mr Yadav is contesting the state elections this time. The seat is Karhal -- part of his family turf Mainpuri -- and is currently represented by party strongman Sobaran Singh Yadav, who won the seat from the BJP in 2002 and then switched to the Samajwadi Party.

About his opponent, the BJP's Union Minister SP Singh Baghel, Mr Yadav said, "SP Singh Baghel is a Union minister. He handles the law department. What is the worth of anything he says?"

The minister, he said, is "promising villagers that if he wins, they can get a judge from their community. He is even promising them a Supreme Court judge from their community. Can this actually happen?"

While the BJP won in 2017 with a sweeping mandate, this election is expected to be a referendum on the state government led by Yogi Adityanath, who has been criticized over his handling of the second wave of Covid.

Rural Uttar Pradesh was hit hard and images of bodies floating down Ganga and buried on its sandbanks, had shocked the country.