BJP will lose as it ran a communal campaign: Akhilesh Yadav

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the election results to the keenly fought Lok Sabha battle, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said Samajwadi Party had lived up to its promise to stop communal forces.

"The results will prove that netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) has stalled communal forces in their tracks," the Yadav scion told TOI.

Akhilesh said all "secular" forces including the Left would come together after the elections to form the government, insisting that the results would see the BJP finish short of the magic mark. "We will all work together. I cannot say what structure it will take," he said.

Asked if Mulayam was a potential PM candidate, the chief minister-son parried the query by saying, "Can anyone accuse netaji of not discharging his role as a bulwark of secularism or can anyone ignore his contribution to the cause of secularism? It is our duty to give a secular government and there will be one."

The UP CM was confident that the Samajwadis would post a strong LS tally on their turf in stark contrast to how the party was "written off" when the elections got under way. Akhilesh said the elections had exposed the BJP for the way its "development agenda morphed into a naked communal campaign". He said, "We were the ones who fought solely on the development plank and the performance of the state government."

The young Samajwadi heir debunked the "Gujarat model" that Modi made the calling card of his election odyssey. "The Gujarat model is created by RSS and VHP out of nothing. Modi as its face is a mere pawn, picked because he has the money and the support of industrialists to run a campaign. The real model is that to divide India," he said.

"Just see how Modi politicised the 'aarti' and god. What is the best time to perform the aarti, it's in the morning. Why could he not do it in the morning? He just wanted to create a drama," the CM said, talking about Modi's decision to drop the prayer on the banks of the Ganga in Varanasi from his schedule following denial of permission for a rally in the temple town.

Akhilesh said the Gujarat CM's decision to contest from Varanasi proved that the entire country was for every citizen. "But he has tied up with forces (Shiv Sena, MNS) that beat up people from UP districts like Azamgarh who go to Mumbai for work. BJP will be taught a lesson in Monday's polling in eastern UP," he said.

For the CM who was the star campaigner for his party, the 2014 election will be remembered for the "big money" that BJP splurged throughout the campaign. "Had it not been for our cadre, our organisation... but we have succeeded in stopping them," he said.

Interestingly, the young Yadav said the elections had proved that BJP put politics ahead of development. "Has Modi distributed laptops to students in Gujarat like I have done in UP. Never. But for his political interest, he spent money to bring in everything — social media, 3D, technology," he said.