Not vote chori but dacoity, says Samajwadi Party Akhilesh Yadav on elections

BENGALURU: Samajwadi Party national president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, on Sunday said he had told Congress that ‘vote chori’ (vote theft) was a “misnomer”.“The scale is much larger — we call it dacoity,” Yadav said on the sidelines of a private programme on inclusive development. “The Bihar election results showed that the popular face was Tejashwi Yadav, who won the most votes. The Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) had a positive agenda — creating jobs and taking Bihar to the next level of development. The other side sought to divide and had a backward-looking vision.”

On inclusivity, he said the INDIA bloc was founded on the premise that regional parties will lead, while others will work with them.Bolstered after “trouncing double-engine govtbacked constituencies in Uttar Pradesh in the parliamentary elections”, Yadav said the state has shown a consistent trend — those who win the parliamentary polls often go on to win assembly elections as well.Responding to a question at the event on India’s slow progress in developing indigenous social media and search engine platforms, Yadav said: “Our neighbouring nation (China) has its own social platforms and search engines. India should have worked in a similar way to strengthen its manufacturing and IT sectors. ‘Make in India’ is a good dream, but one without a roadmap to achieve it. We aim to bridge this gap through ‘Vision India’.”