"If Party Wants": Akhilesh Yadav To NDTV On Contesting UP Election
NDTV
Akhilesh Yadav - a three-time MP from the Kannauj seat - contested from and won the Azamgarh seat in 2019. He has never contested a state election; he sat out the 2012 and 2017 Assembly polls.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav - who this month said he would not fight next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly election - seemed to leave the door ajar on Wednesday, telling NDTV he would only do so "if the party wants". His own priority, he said, was to see the ruling BJP "wiped out".
Mr Yadav - who is currently his party's Lok Sabha MP from UP's Azamgarh, a seat he will have to surrender if he stands for state elections - also said his statement about not contesting was "twisted".
"That statement was twisted. If the Samajwadi Party decides, then I will contest," Mr Yadav told NDTV in front of a raucous crowd of supporters at a rally in Ghazipur district.
"I want to see the BJP wiped out," he said, echoing what he told NDTV last week. At that time, while campaigning in Muzaffarnagar, he declared that a pincer movement of angry farmers and the alliance led by his party would "close the doors (to retaining power in UP) to the BJP".
