Unfazed by the prospect of taking on Yogi Adityanath in his bastion, Azad Samaj Party president Chandrashekhar Azad says the people of Gorakhpur will repeat the history of 1971 when a chief minister of Uttar Pradesh lost an election from the assembly constituency.
Believing victory will be theirs, Azad, whose party is leading the Social Parivartan Morcha of 36 smaller organisations, also introduced himself as the chief ministerial candidate from the alliance, which begins next month in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. It is contesting 403 seats in the elections.
“We need to go back to the history of Gorakhpur, in 1971, a sitting Chief Minister, TN Singh, was defeated by the people of Gorakhpur. Similarly, Adityanath is now the CM and is responsible for the destruction of UP and Gorakhpur in the last. Five years,” Azad, popularly known as ‘Raavan’, told PTI.
After the alliance talks with the Samajwadi Party failed, the Azad Samaj Party (ASP) decided to form a coalition of smaller parties based on its good experience with the larger and established parties.
Azad said, “I wanted to form an alliance (with the SP) to stop the BJP so that there is no division among the opposition. When they did not want to give us their share, we refused.” He also rubbished allegations of being a vote cutter and opened up about his fallout with the Akhilesh Yadav-led party. The 36-year-old, who has emerged as a prominent Dalit face, said, “I am saying that the SP is also doing its job and so are we. I have no problem with the SP.”
Called a “vote-cutter” party by some sections, Azad replied, “When it was rained with sticks on the youth to seek employment, when injustice was done to the sisters. Who raised the real issues of the people?” According to him, people in Uttar Pradesh saw the rule of SP from 2012 to 2017 and BJP from 2017 to 2022. Disappointed with the SP government, people voted for BJP. Hence, the BJP came to power because of them (SP).” The ASP chief said people will not make the same mistake again.
Asked whether he has a real chance against the incumbent Chief Minister of Gorakhpur, Azad said he is confident in his prospects. When people can make Prime Minister Narendra Modi MP even if they are not from the state, then I am at least from Uttar Pradesh. “I will defeat him (Adityanath), we need organizational strength for this and we have. His failures are high inflation, handling of covid, unemployment recruitment scam, law and order and women security, this government failed in all respects. has been,” he said. said.
There was talk of Adityanath fighting from Ayodhya but later it was “changed” to Gorakhpur Urban. The ASP chief said he knew Chandrashekhar Azad would contest against him, so he returned to a so-called “safe seat”. If Adityanath had done a good job, why would he have returned to Gorakhpur? He said, “The people of Gorakhpur are not afraid of him and will not follow his ‘Tughlaqi farmans’. The people of Gorakhpur will repeat the history of 1971 when they defeated a sitting CM.”
Congress-O leader Tribhuvan Narayan Singh was from Varanasi and was sworn in as chief minister in October 1970 without a member of the state legislatures. He contested the 1971 by-election from Maniram seat of Gorakhpur, but lost the election and was forced to resign. Asked about contesting from a seat in eastern Uttar Pradesh, when his influence is believed to be more in the western part of the state, Azad said it is a “media creation” and his party’s influence is everywhere.
Born in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district, Azad started the Bhim Army in 2014 to fight for the welfare of Dalits. He later formed the Azad Samaj Party, which was the political front of the Bhim Army. The party had contested for the first time in the by-elections held in Bulandshahr Sadar seat in 2020. Its candidate Mohammad Yameen was defeated but got 13,000 votes.
Voting for the 403-member Uttar Pradesh assembly is to be held in seven phases from February 10 to March and the counting of votes will take place on March 10.
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