By Shreya Jha
A sneak peek into the achievements and drawbacks of two major parties in poll bound Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh, currently the helm of political chaos in the country. The most recent news regarding political turmoil has been declaration by Mulayam Singh to remove his son and the present chief minister Akhilesh Yadav from the Samajwadi Party.
The two major parties fighting against each other will be the Samajwadi Party under the leadership of Mulayam Singh and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)under the leadership of Mayawati.
In the year 2012 , the Akhilesh Yadav had defeated Mayawati to win the UP legislative assembly elections. And like every elections, the upcoming elections will be witnessing amazing political aspirations with a whole of leaders piling up with their speech and introducing the list of reforms which they wish to make.
The news and media is already flooded with shock-worthy statements by major leaders of UP each day.
However in this rush and matters of political dreams and ambitions, a major role to play is of the voters. For it is ultimately in their hands to decide which political party will be at the helm of affairs for the next five years and decide the fate of the most populous state of the country.
While the voters decide on the parties they have to vote for, lets take a look back at the achievements and failures of these two major contenders.
THE SAMAJWADI PARTY SAGA..
Samajwadi party’s official website reads “creating a socialist party which works on the principle of equality and the party has a secular and democratic outlook”. Certainly the SP has been working towards establishing itself on the ideals of it’s tagline. It has introduced plenty of reforms in the field of agriculture and education. He even emphasized on the setting up of Urdu centres for the students. Akhilesh Yadav as chief minister in his addresses have emphasized on the importance of politics and secularism as a path to progress. In the field of agriculture some of the most successful initiative being the DBT or direct benefit transfer scheme. The state under him has also welcomed a number of reform measures introduced at the centre by the PM Modi government, like the PAHAL scheme and reforms relating to solar energy as a means of electricity.
However there have been a number of failures by the state government of social front. It has at time failed to maintain the socio-economic order. The most popular of them being the Muzaffarnagar riots. The clash between Hindus and Muslims saw the partial death of secularism, the word which SP flaunts on it’s website and promises to deliver. The death of Mohammad Akhlaq by Hindu protesters on grounds of consuming beef saw complete lack of state control over religious fundamentalism and enraged a nation wide debate over this issue.
The SP regime also saw a rise in number of rape cases against Dalit women. The statistics saw a decline in rape cases but in reality the case was that dalit women were unable to report their rape cases and found it difficult to bring up this issue under the Samajwadi party regime. There was a striking fall in the number of dalit rape cases which were registered during the Samajwadi party regime in comparison to the BSP regime headed by Mayawati.
However there have been a number of steps by the state to ensure safety of women , for example Akhilesh Yadav launched the Women Power Line 1090 for prevention of atrocities against women. Pink autorickshaws were launched exclusively for women. The autorickshaw is equipped with helpline numbers and safety manuals. Thereafter the Asha Jyoti 181 Helpline was launched to ensure 24.7 police, medical, legal and other facilities to women in UP.
THE PARTY FOR BAHUJANS…
With this we move on to the other major party fighting the election i.e. the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). This party currently functions under Mayawati. This party has it’s major ideologies as social transformation, social equality, human rights, economic emancipation, secularism, etc. The political party’s primary objective remains to help towards progress of socially subjugated i.e. the minorities, the scheduled caste and scheduled tribes in UP. It has garnered a lot of respect and support from the “Bahujans” i.e. the socially backward and subjugated sections for the amount of work done for their improvement.
Under Mayawati, the state sought a special economic package of 8000 crore for economic development. It also made remarkable developments in terms of construction and completion of Ganga expressway, Yamuna express way, upper ganga canal, etc. A lot of provisions were made for the homeless, the poor and the disabled. Special university was established for the disabled and various reforms were undertaken to provide educational support to students to continue their studies post matriculation and a number of other measures.
What however is notable is that major developments have generally been for the poor and subjugated, whereas implementation of these programmes have not been efficiently looked into. The UP govt. Under Mayawati was often mired into controversy relating to corruption and scams and scandals.
With these two political parties fighting the elections, it will be a delight to watch that who finally wins the game of thrones!
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