Abbajan, Musalman and getting personal — all this is entering the political lexicon in Uttar Pradesh, setting the tone for what could be a bitter election campaign in the biggest state.
The ball was set rolling last week when UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath first used the word Abbajan (father) to purportedly refer to Akhilesh Yadav’s father Mulayam Singh Yadav and cite the latter’s comment three decades ago that he would not even let a bird flutter in Ayodhya. Yadav immediately took objection to this to say the CM should desist from saying so as he too could in turn speak about the Chief Minister’s father.
Adityanath however upped the ante on the floor of the state assembly on Tuesday, asking what was objectionable at all about the word Abbajan. “The Samajwadi Party wants Muslim votes but has a problem with the word Abbajan,” the CM said amidst vociferous protests from the SP members who said the CM’s language had hurt them. The CM however did not stop there and said the SP leadership (Akhilesh Yadav) had hurt the vaccination drive in the state initially by saying they won’t take ‘BJPs vaccine’ but will wait for their own government to come to power.
“But when Abbajan took the vaccine, then he said he will also take it,” the CM said, in an apparent reference to Akhilesh Yadav’s u-turn on vaccine after his father Mulayam Singh Yadav took the shot.
Samajwadi Party leaders protested at the same too, saying such language did not behold a monk chief minister. However, BJP ministers have sprung to the defence of the CM trying to corner Akhilesh Yadav on what problem the SP had with the Urdu word Abbajan when it openly appeases the Muslim community for their votes and claims Muslims are behind it. SP leaders say the CM is trying for similar polarisation as in 2019 elections when he used the Ali-Bajrangbali analogy to allude that the Hindus were backing the BJP in the elections.
Akhilesh Yadav has always been very sensitive about any comments made on his father and has taken on his opponents on the same even during the 2017 assembly elections when BJP took potshots at the dispute inside the Yadav family saying Akhilesh had unseated his father then as the party national president.
Recent campaign songs put out by the SP have taken veiled personal potshots at Yogi Adityanath as well, escalating the friction. The diatribe in UP is only getting more personal though with SP accusing Adityanath for being responsible for thousands of deaths during Covid second wave, while Adityanath says people lost lives as Akhilesh Yadav spread rumours over vaccination drive.
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