Uttar Pradesh elections – some challenges facing Akhilesh Yadav

In the 1984 elections, after the sudden death by assassination of Indira Gandhi, her son became the new Prime Minister and in the polls soon after, he got an astounding number of parliamentary seats giving him a huge majority – with 411 MP’s out of a total possible of 543, this was a huge mandate that he got. However, due to some misguided policies and some wrong steps (opening the locks of the Ram Janambhoomi, the Muslim Personal Law Bill, the huge controversy over the Bofors deal and a group of advisors who did nothing but mis-manage his relations with the country and the media). By the time of the 1989 elections, the support for Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress significantly declined to 197 seats.
The above example just shows that just because a party gets a huge number of seats in a particular election does not mean that this honeymoon will carry over into the next election. In fact, closer home in Uttar Pradesh, the performance of BSP in the 2007 election and then in the recent elections shows how fickle public support can be. Now, with the Samajwadi Party making a huge win in the elections, and then nominating Akhilesh Yadav to be the Chief Minister, the SP can set the ground for continuing this winning way in the future, or crash and burn in the next few years.