Asserting that “the country will get a new prime minister,” Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday, 2 March, said that he does not wish to be prime minister himself but rather “make” the next one.
“I can speak for myself, I don’t want to be prime minister. I want to be the maker,” Akhilesh said at an India Today Conclave in New Delhi in response to questions about who the next prime minister could be.
However, asked if he sees himself as the “kingmaker”, Akhilesh said that he wasn’t one. “No, not kingmaker. Kingmaker sounds like an elderly term. I am new, I don’t know much. I only know how to make.”
In a conversation with Rajdeep Sardesai, he spoke on a range of issues including the Opposition ‘mahagathbandhan’, the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance and said that these coalitions were “a fight to save the Constitution”.
On Pulwama Terror Attacks
Slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adityanath-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, the former UP chief minister also alleged that they weren’t doing enough for the Pulwama martyrs.
Responding to a remark that Pulwama was a new factor in the run up to the elections, Akhilesh said that while the incident has upset the entire nation, the issues on the ground still remain the same for farmers and youth of the state .
“The youth is unemployed. In rural areas, more than 90% youth are without jobs,” he said. Taking a potshot at PM Modi, he remarked, “After all, there is marketing and branding and it has an effect but if the product is bad, what will marketing achieve?”
On Pulwama altering the political narrative, he asserted that while most martyrs are from Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi Adityanath government isn’t doing much for them.
Other states are helping the families of martyrs with Rs 1 crore. Can’t our state from where PM Modi comes give Rs 1 crore to the martyrs’ families in Uttar Pradesh? They claim UP has the largest budget. What is the use of the budget if it can’t help the martyrs’ families.Akhilesh Yadav, Samjawadi Party president
On ‘Mahagathbandhan’ and SP-BSP Alliance
He also defended the alliance between SP and BSP in Uttar Pradesh for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The coalition also includes the Rashtriya Lok Dal and the nascent NISHAD Party.
“This is a fight to save the Constitution and our constitutional rights in Uttar Pradesh,” said Akhilesh and also asked, “who had sparked the fire of hatred in Kairana?”
When asked how many seats the major parties in Uttar Pradesh would get, he refused to answer the questions stating that “I won’t say how many seats SP will get because then the BJP will find out.”
“All I can say is that the country will get a new prime minister,” he said.
He said that he felt that the BJP will lose in UP because they haven’t worked on the ground.
The SP chief also took potshots at television media, advising people to “watch less television. They should watch Netflix”.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)