Mulayam Singh Yadav begins party`s campaign with Azamgarh rally

The Samajwadi Party will officially launch its campaign for 2014 Lok Sabha polls by holding a public rally in Azamgarh.

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party (SP) will on Tuesday officially launch its campaign for 2014 Lok Sabha polls by holding a public rally in Azamgarh, 265 km from here.

The rally will be addressed by party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and is likely to spell out contours of the party`s `Chalo Dilli` campaign, aimed at getting maximum seats in the Lok Sabha. The ministers and the state unit of the party has pulled all stops to make the rally a huge success as it does not want to be seen as a "damp squib in terms of the people" as compared to BJP`s Narendra Modi, who is drawing huge crowds at his rallies. Admitting that the crowd flow would be closely watched, party leaders told a news agency that it should not be a problem given Akhilesh Yadav`s popularity among the youth. Hundreds of journalists have been taken to Azamgarh by the party media wing to cover the event, which would also mark the culmination of the first leg of its `Yatras` to include 17 very backward castes into the ambit of OBCs. With three ministers from the region and several legislators from the district and neighbouring areas, party leaders say the rally will be a huge success. Earlier this week, Mulayam Singh Yadav had warned party leaders not to be callous about public support and personally camp in the area to inform and involve people. Azamgarh has a sizeable population of Muslims and the party wants to win them back amid reports that the Muslims are peeved at the Muzaffarnagar riots in the state. Among other political issues, the party is likely to pitch in the development and welfare schemes of the state government, while billing the rise of Narendra Modi as a threat to the social and secular fabric of the country, a senior leader said. "We will go to the people at the rally with all the good work that we have done in the past two years and caution the public of the efforts to vitiate the atmosphere in the state," he added further. The speeches of its leaders would be telecast live on the web portal of the Samajwadi Party (SP).