Chhote Netaji UP's next CM?

Could Akhilesh Yadav be the next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh?

Speculation has begun, that the 38-year-old head of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh could be rewarded for his performance in the assembly polls by being nominated for the the post.

The party will be meeting today in order to nominate their candidate for Chief Ministership and according to CNN-IBN, party president Mulayam Singh could nominate Akhilesh.

While Akhilesh has firmly denied all speculation saying that the people of Uttar Pradesh and party cadre wanted Netaji (Mulayam Singh) to be the next head of the state, there are few who would deny that a bigger role awaits the soft spoken engineer in the state.

While some believe it would be the handling of preparations for the 2014 elections, there are others that believe the Tuesday’s results are indication enough of his hold over politics in the state.

Members of the Samajwadi youth cadre believe that Akhilesh, who is already an MP from Kannauj in the state, that the results are an indication of the electorate’s desire for him to take over the reins of the state.

However, while his dynastic claim to UP politics was never in doubt, at one time Akhilesh made for an unlikely head of the party.

A student of Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering in Mysore, Akhilesh is remembered as someone who kept to himself and guarded his privacy fiercely.

Speaking a smattering of functional Kannada to get by and roaming around in a Maruty Gypsy, the image of a political scion was something Akhilesh seemed to studiously avoid.

“He still continues to be simple and highly approachable. For the first two years of his stay in Mysore, he stayed all by himself with friends," Adarsh NC, a photographer told the Deccan Herald .

A post graduation course in Sydney followed and then marriage but at no point did Akhilesh seem like he wanted to be a part of the political system his father was seen as being a stalwart of.

“In 1999, he had just got married and all he wanted to do was roam around and have fun. But party elders forcibly inducted him into politics saying young people were rooting for him,” Mulayam Singh said of his son to The Hindu during campaigning in the state.

Akhilesh continued to dodge the limelight even after he became a part of the Samajwadi Party MP from Kannauj in 2000 has never spoken in public against his father’s seemingly regressive plans to ban computers and make Hindi the official language.

And despite being a fluent English speaker, Akhilesh has firmly spoken in Hindi at all public forum and in all his interviews to the media even when asked questions in English. He has also begun to speak of the importance of using computers saying it could be used to work in other languages like Hindi and Urdu as well.

It was his wife’s loss in a by-election from Ferozabad that he said opened his eyes to the politics of the state and prompted his moves to bring  changes within the party. A break-up with former BJP stalwart Kalyan Singh’s party and the removal of long standing partner Amar Singh cemented his authority and helped build his image in the state.

Cleaning up the party of candidates criminals also helped the SP lose it’s tag of being a party of goondas just in time for the assembly polls.

Not averse to social media, Akhilesh has accounts on Facebook and Twitter saying that social networking is an ’equaliser’ that has breached caste, class and the rural-urban divides in the state.

And now after his biggest political victory so far, Akhilesh is the cynosure of the media and his party cadre to see what role he will play next.

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