Click to play videoBarabanki: Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi and son of Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh, Akhilesh Yadav, have kicked off their campaign in Uttar Pradesh with an eye on the Muslim vote bank and their common enemy, the state's Chief Minister Mayawati.
Their message is the same - give us the mandate and that Mayawati is a dictator.
Rahul has tried every trick in the book to establish a connection with voters, even going to the extent of saying that migrant labour from UP was being forced into begging.
"There has been no work in the last 20 years, if you don’t do well, you will have to go out, the way you go out every year, to Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana for employment. Bangalore, Hyderabad are ahead in IT. India is moving ahead, UP is behind," Rahul Gandhi said.
For the Australia educated Akhilesh the issues are the same but the strategy is different. His father Mulayam Singh built an alliance of Muslims and Yadavs across the state, an alliance that's now crumbling. Akhilesh is now promising a corruption free regime.
Both Rahul and Akhilesh are also eyeing the same vote banks - the Muslims. If the Samajwadi Party has brought back prominent minority leader Azam Khan, the Congress is promising reservations for the community.
While the Congress has been trying to convert the forthcoming polls as one between the BSP and Rahul, the SP, too, is working its way up the ladder. No so called communal Kalyan Singh, no campaign socialist Amar Singh, Mulayam's son is going all out to recover his lost territory in Uttar Pradesh.
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