The SP's victory in U.P. elections, enabling the young Akhilesh to emerge as the Chief Minister of the sprawling State, is an impressive and epoch-making feature in the country's political history.
Time has come for the Congress to do some soul-searching and rid itself of discrepancies and shortcomings in its political strategy.
S. Nadarajan,
Puducherry
Akhilesh worked hard to make his party acceptable to the U.P. electorate and deserves to become Chief Minister. But some still feel it is dynastic succession.
We should not lose sight of the fact that wards of politicians too have a right to participate in democracy and voters have the right to vote them to power too.
Baikadi Suryanarayana Rao,
Bangalore
Akhilesh Yadav's academic credentials and clean record inspire confidence. Dynastic politics becomes a curse only when undeserving relatives of politicians get rewarded with plum posts.
In some instances, dynastic politics has helped groom young leaders. One hopes that Akhilesh's modern outlook will rejuvenate the SP and help it to shed its parochial attitude, and pull it out from the quagmire of dirty politics.
Lalit Kumar Bhardwaj,
Kozhikode
The media, showering praise on Akhilesh Yadav and criticising Rahul Gandhi, are influenced by short-term factors. When the Congress did fairly well in the 2009 general election, Rahul was projected as the man who could revamp the Congress. The media obsession with the Nehru-Gandhi family continued till the fifth phase of election campaign in U.P. Akhilesh was hardly noticed.
With the wave blowing in favour of the junior Yadav, the media have turned their cameras towards him and declared Rahul a failure. Let us not forget that the SP was largely responsible for criminalising U.P. politics. It has been in power and its regime was notorious for lawlessness. Things are certainly not going to be easy for the youngest Chief Minister of U.P.
Arun Kant,
New Delhi
