UP will give us clear mandate, we don't need Cong: Akhilesh

Better candidates for the polls, embracing progressive policies and promising to change the state’s official language to Hindi are just some of the things that Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav believes will help them sweep the Uttar Pradesh polls.

The 38-year-old Samajwadi Party leader, credited with creating a rigorous screening process to clean up the quality of the candidates representing the party, is also keen to shed the reputation of being a ‘goonda’ party and says he will not tolerate having law breakers in the party.

“At that time (during the earlier tenure in power) we needed numbers as we did not have enough seats.

But for five years now, we have worked hard,” he said in an interview with The Indian Express.

In an interview with India Today, he said he started the selection process for candidates in 2010 by inviting applications and then interviewed them along with senior party functionaries. The final list was approved by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

When asked if some tainted candidates had still managed to stand for polls, he told India Today, “Maybe two or three. But either their cases are still pending before the courts or they have had false cases registered against them.”

Yadav, engaged in a war of words with Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi throughout the ongoing polls, says he does not see the need to worry about his personal equation with the Congress leader if the party’s support is required to come to power in Uttar Pradesh.

“We want to win by a majority,” Yadav, who sees only the BSP as a real challenger to the SP’s campaign, told the The Indian Express.

He is also not opposed to rethinking the party’s strategy of supporting the UPA at the Centre but believes the Congress will need to rethink its strategies if it wants to continue the relationship.

“If they want to continue the government at the Centre, they’ll have to decide who are their friends and who are not. As for us, Uttar Pradesh will give us a clear mandate. We won’t need them,” he told India Today.

An engineer who speaks fluent English, he wants the state’s official language to be made Hindi.

Yadav said he wasn’t against people sending their children to English medium schools but wanted the official language of the state to be made Hindi.

“If people want to study in English medium, that is their choice. But we want the official language to be Hindi,” Yadav told The Indian Express.

For a party once ridiculed for publicly stating its opposition to computers in workplaces, Yadav has been working hard to reform the image of the party, according to India Today.

Apart from being constantly on his Blackberry, Yadav has also reportedly brought in computers into the party office.

Yadav also claimed the party had not dropped former SP general secretary and public face of the party, Amar Singh.

“Somewhere Amar Singh was angry with the party and he accepted that he should leave the party and that is why he left. None of us wanted him out,” he told The Indian Express.

But he leaves little to doubt when asked who the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate is for this polls. “Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav). Everyone wants him,” he told India Today.