Ministers in the Akhilesh government will now be given the responsibility of ensuring the party’s success on the seats it had lost in 2012 elections.
Ministers in the Akhilesh government will now be given the responsibility of ensuring the party’s success on the seats it had lost in 2012 elections.
Each minister will be allotted three to four seats from the list of 143 candidates that were recently announced by the Samajwadi Party.
The ministers will not only monitor the campaign on these seats but will also tour the constituencies and inform the voters about the welfare schemes launched by the state government. “We are aware that we will lose a number of our sitting seats but we are determined to make up for the loss by winning new seats – ones we had lost in 2012. This is not a rare phenomenon but a common occurrence in every election”, said a senior SP functionary.
The Samajwadi leadership will soon allot seats to its ministers, who will be expected to continuously tour the Assembly segments and submit reports to the party headquarters.
The ministers will be allotted constituencies that are at a considerable distance from their own constituencies. They will also be required to maintain a close coordination with the local party workers and help the candidate in ironing out differences, if any. The party is aware that there will be infighting in every Assembly segment and those who have been denied tickets will create problems for the official candidate. The ministers will be asked to resolve the situation and ensure unity at the grassroot level. During the panchayat elections, the SP had deputed ministers in some of the district and the results were very positive. The decision to deploy ministers in Assembly segments comes in the wake of complaints from party workers that ministers do not interact with them. “This exercise is designed to lessen the gap between ministers and party workers because workers have been telling us how the ministers refuse to listen,” the functionary said. The ministers, however, are not too happy with the party’s decision to make them responsible for assembly seats. “Elections are just a few months away and we need to concentrate on our own constituencies. If we spent the next few months in other assembly segments, where will we get the time to set our own house in order” asked a senior minister from eastern UP.
