Mulayam pulls up party cadre before crucial UP panchayat elections

Also doubts winning prospects of SP candidates based on feedback from the ground

Ruling Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav on Wednesday pulled up party cadres before the crucial forthcoming Uttar Pradesh panchayat elections.

Addressing a gathering here, Yadav minced no words in questioning the poll preparedness of the party in panchayat polls, which are dubbed as the semifinal before the 2017 UP polls.

Underlining the importance of panchayat elections, he said the Left parties could rule in West Bengal for decades due to their good performance in panchayat polls. However, when they lost these elections, the communist regime was voted out in the state elections as well, he asserted.

He was addressing a function to mark the 83rd birth anniversary of late socialist leader and party Member of Parliament Janeshwar Mishra here.

Yadav even doubted the winning prospects of SP candidates based on the feedback from the ground. He even broached upon the next Vidhan Parishad polls to elect 36 members of legislative council (MLC) apart from the panchayat polls.

He said the party should give assembly and legislative council tickets to candidates with clean image, while suggesting chief minister Akhilesh Yadav to ensure holding of free and fair panchayat elections.

He maintained the party leaders should now come out of their air-conditioned rooms and reach out to the people and publicise the good works of the state government.

Yadav, who is known to vent his feelings publicly on several occasions, recalled the bad performance of the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when the party's tally came down to 5 vis-à-vis 73 of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally Apna Dal in Uttar Pradesh.

UP panchayat elections are due between September 9 and December 15, 2015 to fill the post of 59,164 gram pradhans, 74,3297 gram panchayat, 78,075 kshetra panchayat and 3,134 zila panchayat members.

In the three-tier panchayat polls, about 110 million electorate would elect almost 8,84,410 representatives, including gram pradhan apart from the members of the gram panchayat, kshetra panchayat and zila panchayat.