New Delhi: The joint Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance will rally around the themen “Apne UP Ke Ladke” – stressing home the point that both Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi belong to the state as against the “outsiders” Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo leading the BJP campaign – that will be modelled on the successful “Bihari vs Bahari” plank run by Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav in the Bihar polls.
With this theme, the war-room strategists of the “Grand Alliance” plan to take aim at the BJP’s inability to project a local face as the chief ministerial candidate for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections slated to begin next month.
Prashant Kishor, who was the mastermind behind the JD(U)-RJD-Congress Mahagatbandhan’s campaign, is also believed to be the architect of the new “Apne Ladke vs Bahri Modi" strategy.
The BJP is sure to counter the new campaign pointing out that Modi himself got elected from Varanasi in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, making him a representative of Uttar Pradesh, but the SP-Congress strategists hope the claim won’t get much traction.
Akhilesh and Rahul Gandhi will attend a slew of combined SP and Congress rallies to drive home the campaign, which will be supported by a blitzkrieg poster and social media campaigns.
While Akhilesh is raised in Lucknow, his family roots are in Saifai in Etawah district that has been carefully nurtured by both his father Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh himself as the chief minister of the state.
The Gandhi-Nehrus trace their roots to Allahabad, and besides, Rahul had taken his political plunge looking after the party affairs in UP. One of the first political speeches of Rahul Gandhi’s career was also delivered in Kanpur. Both Sonia and Rahul are Lok sabha MPs from Rae Bareli and Amethi respectively.
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