Akhilesh Yadav is likely to be re-elected as chief at Samajwadi Party’s national convention

Party says it will discuss the current political, economic scenario, and ‘neglect of the BJP’s double engine government towards development works’

With an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Samajwadi Party (SP), the principal Opposition party in the Uttar Pradesh State Assembly, will be organising it’s national convention on September 29 to elect its national president and new team at the Ramabai Ambedkar Park in Lucknow. A day before that, on September 28, the party is holding its State convention to choose the State president at the same venue. In all likelihood, former Chief Minister of U.P. and party chief Akhilesh Yadav will be unanimously elected as the national president again.

This will be the second convention held under Mr. Yadav’s leadership since he replaced his father Mulayam Singh Yadav as the SP’s national president amidst a family feud in 2017.

In a statement before the convention, the party said that the convention aims to elect and unite leaders and workers for the upcoming 2024 parliamentary polls. “The Samajwadi Party will hold organisational elections in the national and state conferences and unite its leaders and workers in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and resolve to overthrow the BJP's monopoly power with the strength of the organization and the people,” the statement issued by the party’s chief spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said.

The party will also pass political and economic resolutions directed against the BJP government at the convention. “The national and state conference of the Samajwadi Party will also discuss the current political economic scenario along with the neglect of the BJP’s double engine government towards development works,” the release issued a day before the convention reads.

The convention hold significance as, after the debacle in the Assembly polls earlier this year, Mr. Akhilesh Yadav dissolved the national and the State executives of the party and commenced a membership drive to enrol two crore members to the party.

In recent years, the SP has emerged as the key challenger to the ruling BJP in U.P., sending 80 Members of Parliament to the Lok Sabha. In the 2022 Assembly polls, the SP-led alliance polled roughly 36% votes and won 125 seats in the U.P. Assembly of 403 members. The politically crucial State is increasingly turning into a bi-polar contest between the BJP on one side the SP-led alliance on the other.