Varanasi: Akhilesh Yadav will not contest the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election. The Samajwadi Party president said on Tuesday that he intends to take oath as chief minister while still a Lok Sabha member, the route he took in 2012.
"We become chief minister when we do not contest elections. So, we will do what is auspicious for us," Yadav told reporters at the airport here, turning a question on whether he would try his luck from a Varanasi seat into a joke about Kashi's fondness for a shubh muhurat.
"I become CM even when I didn't contest elections. In the past, I took oath as CM while being a Lok Sabha member. This time also, I will take oath as CM from the Lok Sabha," he said.
In 2012, Yadav became chief minister after the SP won a majority without him being an MLA. He entered the Legislative Council later.
The remarks came a day after the BJP lost both the Varanasi teachers' and graduates' MLC constituencies. Yadav thanked voters for re-electing Ashutosh Sinha and Lal Bihari Yadav, and said the BJP's "double-engine", "double speed" and "double development" slogans had produced a "double zero" in Kashi.
He also attacked the Yogi Adityanath government over traffic and what he called unkept promises on Varanasi's development. If the BJP could not make Varanasi a "Kyoto", it should at least hang a picture of Kyoto, he said, and promised a metro for the city if the SP forms a government.
Asked why he had skipped the Kashi Vishwanath temple, Yadav said he had built shrines to Vishwanath and Kedareshwar at home and prays there before leaving the house. Without naming Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, he asked where the bulldozers had gone in cases involving Sanatani people, and said Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav should send them to such godmen.
He also alleged that 26,000 schools had been shut, that paper leaks had become routine and that statues of B R Ambedkar were being vandalised, and accused the BJP of winning through "vote theft". He promised a metro for Varanasi and said young people would smile once the BJP was voted out.
The SP and the Congress are still negotiating seat sharing for 2027, with the Congress asking for a large share of the 403 seats.