Akhilesh Yadav was addressing a public meeting in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh (File)
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav resorted to an interesting analogy to explain his party's crushing defeat in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections as he termed the electoral contest a race between sports car "Ferrari" (BJP) and a "cycle" (his party's election symbol). He further said it was a foregone conclusion that the "Ferrari" would emerge triumphant.
"It was a race between Ferrari and a cycle. Everybody knew the Ferrari will win. The Lok Sabha elections were not fought on issues, it was fought on something else," Mr Yadav was quoted by news agency PTI as saying.
Mr Yadav was addressing a public meeting in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh on Monday when he made the remark.
"Tell me who was seen on televisions everyday? They penetrated into our brains. They played with our minds with TV and mobile phones. This was a different kind of battle, which we could not understand. The day we understand this, we will emerge victorious," he added.
Mr Yadav had entered into an alliance with rival Mayawati aiming to stop the BJP from repeating its 2014 general election show in which it had won 71 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
In 2019, however, the UP alliance failed in its objective as the BJP pulled yet another stellar performance by winning 62 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The alliance could manage to win only 15 seats.
In the alliance too, Samajwadi Party's losses were greater than that of its ally. Mayawati's party, which had scored a naught in 2014, won 10 Lok Sabha seats, with a marginal loss of vote share. Mr Yadav's party lost over 4 per cent of its vote share, with no change in the number of seats it had won in 2014.
Mayawati today announced her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will contest bypolls to 11 Uttar Pradesh assembly seats alone.
Akhilesh Yadav, in his first reaction, said his party would also consider contesting on all 11 seats in the bypolls.
With inputs from PTI