Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday in Sambhal said the people of Sambhal had made up their minds that the biggest defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would face in the country in the ongoing General Election will be in the Sambhal Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh.
“The people of Sambhal have made up their mind that the biggest defeat the BJP will face in the country will be in Sambhal,” Mr. Yadav said, addressing a public meeting in Sambhal.
In Sambhal, the SP’s candidate Zia Ur Rehman Barq is locked in a three-cornered contest with the BJP’s Parmeshwar Lal Saini and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Shaulat Ali.
The SP leader accused the BJP of endangering the Indian Constitution and described the 2024 Lok Sabha election as a fight to save democratic and constitutional values. “Whenever the BJP comes to power, it takes decisions which harm the public. This time, the Constitution is in danger. This (the ongoing Lok Sabha election) is a fight to save the Constitution. Only if this Constitution is saved, our rights will be saved,” he said, adding that the BJP wanted to change India’s Constitution.
“The public will change the BJP this time. The ruling party put the future of youths into darkness — neither gave jobs nor employment. The BJP government betrayed farmers. It has also continuously increased inflation, made diesel and petrol costlier, putting all sections into trouble,” Mr. Yadav said.
Mr. Yadav said that the day farmers’ loans were waived off, the farming community and the country would move towards development. “Our farmers will be prosperous. On that very day, our India will start moving on the path of developed India,” he said.
Ridiculing the BJP’s slogan of “400 paar“ (crossing 400 seats), Mr. Yadav said that since the second phase of voting, BJP leaders had forgotten the slogan. “Trends emerging across U.P. and other parts signify that the BJP is going towards a big defeat. These BJP people who are roaming around, first they gave the slogan of crossing 400, and when the second phase happened, they forgot the slogan of 400. The public this time is going to defeat the BJP on 400 seats,” he said.
The Sambhal Lok Sabha constituency in the western U.P. region has for decades challenged the BJP, with the ruling party succeeding in winning the seat only once till date — in 2014, when Mr. Saini won narrowly, by about 5,000 votes, against the SP’s Mr. Barq. Mr. Saini polled 3,60,242 votes against Mr. Barq’s 3,55,068 votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Mr. Barq won the seat, defeating Mr. Saini by over 1,65,000 votes. In Sambhal, Muslims constitute approximately 35% of the total electorate.
